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Home > GERMANY > Geschftsveranstaltungen
FRUITLOGISTICA: ITALIAN FRUIT AND VEGETABLES GO INTERNATIONAL
Rome (Ign) - A meeting point for fresh food from all over the world. From 8 to 10 February Berlin will host Fruit Logistica, the most important international fair in the fruit and vegetable sector, which every year attracts thousands of visitors from every part of the world (www.fruitlogistica.de). Last year it played host to 1600 exhibitors from 64 countries, and 36,000 visitors. Fruit Logistica is also the promoter of a virtual fruit and vegetable market (www.fruitlogistica.com), a portal with 140,000 visitors per year where it is possible to exchange information on supply and prices with the aim of bringing together supply and demand. The event is a unmissable meeting point for the companies involved in the fruit and vegetable supply chain, and an opportunity to present their range of services, from growing to sales. One of the greatest attractions of Fruit Logistica is the sector of exotic products, which often hosts businesses from developing countries. But also those from Central and Eastern Europe have at their disposal an excellent showcase for increasing business contacts. But the most numerous companies remain those with an extensive fruit and vegetable market that provide a wide range of top quality products. These include Italian businesses, which will be present at the event thanks to a collective delegation organised by the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE).
The Italian food industry is in fact of an impressive size: its total turnover in 2006, according to estimates from Federalimentare (www.federalimentare.it) based on Istat data, was €110bn, and is made up of 32,400 businesses, 6500 of them with over 9 employees. The value of exports is €16.7bn, and puts the sector in second place, after engineering, in the league table of Italian manufacturing. The fruit and vegetable sector, then, is impressive in terms of figures and size: in 2005 Italy harvested 27.4m tonnes of fruit and vegetables, over an area of almost 1.4m hectares. The study carried out by the National Association of Fruit, Vegetable and Citrus Exporters and Importers (Aneioa) based on Istat data, highlight that exported goods exceeded the level of 3.5m tonnes with an increase of 9.1% on 2004.
In the same period, the total value of foreign turnover exceeded €2.9bn, with a jump of 15.3%, and the trade surplus rose to €518m (+23.4% compared to the previous year). In the first eight months of 2006, then, exports continued to follow a positive trend: the increase in quantity was 1.9%, while that in value was 8.1%. This growth was due to fresh fruit (+14.3%), citrus fruit (+8.4%) and vegetables (+8.2%). This excellent performance was due above all to the recovery of consumption in Germany, the leading market for Italian products, but also to the two-figure increases recorded in Poland, Russia and the US. Fresh fruit in a year saw an increase of 20.4% in foreign sales: above all down to table grapes, which recorded increases of 20% in the EU, with a peak of 29%. 80% of Italian fruit and vegetables comes from eight regions: in first place is Sicily (17% of the total), followed by Puglia, Campania and Emilia Romagna, which have a production share of 13-14%. Once the crisis of 2004 had been overcome, the Italian fruit and vegetable sector started on the road to recovery, and trade fairs are expected to give it the boost it needs to really get going.
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