THERE ARE FEWER BUT BIGGER WINERIES IN ITALY: IN 10 YEARS BUSINESSES DROPPED FROM 791.000 TO 383.000 (52% LESS), BUT THE AVERAGE SIZE HAS GROWN 82%, REVEALS FEDAGRI CONFCOOPERATIVE- ISTAT AGRICULTURE CENSUS

The trend is fewer but larger wineries. In the last 10 years, the wine world has seen a decrease in the number of wineries by as much as 52%, but an increase in the average size of farm land by 82%, reveals Fedagri-Confcooperative (the national federation of food and agriculture cooperatives-confederation of Italian cooperatives), which analyzed data from the last Istat (Italian statistics agency) Agriculture Census. In 2000 there were 791.000 wineries while in 2010 there are only 383.000. However, the average size has increased to 1.6 hectares of land compared to the 0.9 hectares ten years ago.

“Mostly the small and very small wineries have closed down,” said the President of Fedagri, Maurizio Gardini, “and this is precisely the direction we are heading in order to overcome splitting while significantly contributing to restructuring and strengthening the national wine sector”. Ultimately, it is not bad for the industry, given that profit margins are increasingly compressed and small producers, by themselves, often cannot sustain them. We need “mergers and fusion procedures to make our wineries stronger and help give more structure to supply chains,” said Gardini. Cooperatives? They lost 10.8% of the companies and 22.9% of the shareholders, but turnover increased from 1.9 billion to 2.6 billion euros.