Skills and digitalization: Italian wine replies to export drop with managerial skills

While there are many reasons for difficulty that the world of wine is currently coping with, and just as many solutions, more or less widely shared, being put forward to tackle this particular historical period, everyone seems to agree on one essential point needed to “navigate” the storm: change (so much so that 4 out of 10 Italian wine companies, according to a recent WineNews survey, expect a recovery in 2026). Many have already started down this path, including in Italy, the world leading country in terms of wine production and second in terms of product value, as highlighted by the Wine Industry Outlook by Michael Page, the British player regarded as one of the international benchmarks in the search for highly qualified professionals and managers. According to the report, Italian wine producers, also in light of an export market under increasing pressure, will pursue “change” by bringing new specialized roles into their organizations and by investing in digitalization processes to manage their operations.
The Italian wine sector, Michael Page states, is undergoing a deep transformation which goes beyond product quality. Margin pressure, new export barriers, and changes in consumption patterns are pushing both large and small companies to rethink strategies, markets, and above all, skills. For this reason, the study shows that the sector is moving toward an increasingly managerial and data-driven model, in which strategic vision, analytical capabilities, and brand positioning become decisive levers for competitiveness.
A sector, that of Italian wine, which is moving at different speeds. The analysis highlights a strong polarization based on company size: Smes with turnover below 10 million euros focus on increasing average value (45.5%) and on brand repositioning, strategies necessary to defend themselves against price pressure. Large groups, on the other hand, with revenues exceeding 100 million euros, focus on economies of scale, volume growth, and consolidation of organizational processes. According to Michael Page, this dynamic is generating growing demand for professionals capable of operating in complex environments, where financial and commercial management can no longer be improvised. Unsurprisingly, 33% of companies identify margin pressure as a structural critical issue.
Italian wine exports are also under the magnifying glass. After closing 2025 in negative territory, exports began 2026 with a worsening trend: in January 2026, according to WineNews analysis based on Istat data, results were down 18.7% in value to 470 million euros compared to January 2025 (a loss of 108 million euros), with volumes at 133 million hectoliters (-13.3% compared to January 2025). These figures were heavily influenced by the collapse in the U.S. market (-35.2% in value). Not by chance, Michael Page points out that the Italian wine export system is gradually losing some of its historical certainties: companies face a complex scenario marked by economic pressure, fragile distribution networks, and new trade barriers. Price pressure cuts across all revenue brackets, squeezing margins throughout the entire supply chain. Trade barriers are also weighing increasingly heavily, with their impact growing in proportion to company turnover: tariffs are a problem for 25% of companies, rising to 30% among those with revenues above 30 million euros, and reaching 33.3% for companies exceeding 100 million euros in turnover. Difficulties in managing importers, by contrast, are inversely proportional to turnover: among companies with revenues below 10 million euros, 36.8% report this issue, compared with a market average of 22%.
One of the expected changes concerns the acceleration toward digitalization, which, according to Michael Page, will evolve from a technological lever into a tool for business governance. In this complex scenario, digitalization emerges not as an end in itself, but as a means of control and protection of profitability. 85% of companies in the sample plan to invest in digitalization over the next 24 months, with priorities varying according to company size. For smaller companies, digital tools primarily support margin control and operational efficiency. In mid-sized companies, structured management of customers and distributors (Crm) becomes central, while among large groups digitalization evolves toward advanced business intelligence systems, commercial forecasting, and strategic decision support. The common denominator for all is that technology is no longer seen as an optional competitive advantage, but as essential infrastructure for managing complexity, multichannel strategies, and exports. At the same time, a skill gap is clearly emerging: investing in tools without having professionals capable of interpreting and using them risks drastically reducing their effectiveness. In this sense, Crm systems integrated with artificial intelligence (Ai) solutions can facilitate access to, interpretation of, and insight from data by those responsible for analysis and decision-making.
“Our data  - comments Pierluigi Catello, Executive Manager at Michael Page - clearly shows that wine companies are increasingly more inclined to invest in digital solutions which enable full control over direct and indirect costs. The goal is not only to increase efficiency, but to leverage data to identify savings opportunities and, above all, to structure commercial strategies capable of generating the margins companies are targeting. This is particularly evident among larger groups operating across multiple markets and distribution channels, which need systems able to analyze performance not only by market and customer, but also by individual product, so as to understand where value is created, and where it is instead lost”.