Several of Italy’s leading soft fruit marketers have bemoaned what they feel is a lack of forward thinking from the country’s major retailers in continuing to stock significant volumes of Spanish strawberries despite the domestic season approaching its productive peak.
Speaking to Italiafruit, Marco Salvi of leading marketer Salvi Unacoa said that a positive start to the Italian season had given way to a notable slowdown in sales, a decline he attributed to retailers’ failure to prioritise homegrown fruit and promote it to shoppers.
“We’re waiting and hoping for a change of pace from the big national retailers to boost sales and maximise results for the supply chain over the next four to five weeks, which will determine the outcome of the campaign,” he explained.
“When Italian product arrives, we tend to give it priority for reasons for freshness, but Spanish product is still present [in stores] and the prices are not competitive enough to guarantee sufficient returns to the producers.
“In short, there still hasn’t been a change of gear in terms of range and sales price, so we cannot optimise the situation for the whole chain.
Salvi, who is also president of the Italian fresh produce export association Fruitimprese, said the supply chain lacked “fairness” when it came to distributing domestic fruit.
“At this moment, the right conditions would be there for a quality product that’s still fresh, harvested today and brought to the point of sale on the following day; a very short suppy chain and the right partnership between production and distribution would allow us to get the best results, to everyone’s satisfaction. There is time to reverse the trend: the large volume starts now, so we hope the right conditions will be created to work well.”
Carmela Suriano, chief executive of Italian strawberry brand Candonga, said she was in full agreement with Salvi’s comments.
“Unfortunately, unlike in other European countries, the Italian retailers have turned the strawberry into a commodity, severely damaging the domestic strawberry sector and consumers, who do not find strawberries of Italian origin in many supermarkets and hypermarkets,” she told Italiafruit.
“The fact is, modern retailers consider price to be the determining factor in selling more strawberries. I believe the consumer is asking for more quality, however, which is understood above all to mean healthiness, taste and shelf-life.”
Her views were echoed by Gianluca Bellini, commercial manager at Apo Scaligera: “We all share the same hope that Italian chains will change the way they manage and set the price, reducing it when it suits them, and above all focus more on Made in Italy.”
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