An excellent year

«A Vinitaly bubbling over, both on the domestic front, where the “mini-recovery” is yielding its fruits, and on that of exports, where we’ve registered promising events and buyers in attendance».

The words are Domenico Zonin’s, owner of the eponymous concern, and they are emblematic of the assessments of operators in attendance at the 2015 edition of Vinitaly, the Italian wine fair (Verona, March 22-25).
The event hosted approximately 4,000 exhibitors and 150 thousand visitors, with a grower number of countries of buyer origin (from last year’s 120 to this year’s 140), and more than 2,600 journalists from 46 countries to amplify an event that plays an undeniably important role in promoting Italy’s wine industry.
 

Important phenomena to keep in mind are the recovery of the domestic market in both horeca and GDO, the increase of foreign buyers, partly thanks to +34% incoming investments and a collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Development, Agenzia-ICE and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policy. The most exciting new entries hail from East Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia), Mexico, Africa (Cameroon and Mozambique) and North Africa with Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco in recovery, both for wine and for extra virgin olive oil.
In terms of absolute values, North America drives flows, with the USA and Canada at 20% of the 55 thousand foreign visitors, preceded, but not by much, only by Europe.
Here the German language area dominates (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), with 25% of attendees, followed by the UK (10%), Scandinavia and Benelux. France’s presence grows significantly, beating Japan in the general ranking of attendance, while China, Hong Kong and Taiwan come in eighth; Russia ninth, the only country with dropping representation due to the difficulty of its geopolitical situation, and Brazil closes off the top ten.
Lesser quotas are represented by other EU countries, particularly Poland and Romania.