Italian wine and the world e-commerce boom, with the pandemic: the “Russia case”

If in the global e-commerce boom, in time of the pandemic, even the wine & food made in Italy is growing, there is a “Russia case”: in the exponential increase in online food purchases due to the Covid effect, which saw the sector grow 4.5 times between March-April 2020 over the same period 2019, according to data from Yandex.com analyzed by InfoLine, in May 2020 alone, the demand for Italian wine tripled (+216%). In particular, Italian wine searches on Russia’s largest search engine rose from 10,750 in May 2019 to 34,074 in May 2020. All in all, in a Russian digital market, the largest in Europe, which globally is worth 30 billion dollars in 2020, will reach a value of 52 billion in 2023 according to Morgan Stanley’s forecasts, with a growth of 170%, and in which online food will grow from 45 billion rubles (518 million euros) to 130 billion rubles at the end of 2020 (one and a half billion euros) to reach 300 billion rubles in turnover (3.45 billion euros) by 2023.
With many opportunities for Italian producers, especially for niche or prestigious products, given that Italy is the leading exporter to the Russian Federation, with a 30% share of volumes, in a market of 900 million euros and 4.1 million hectoliters of wine imports, where sparkling wines have grown in recent years, but also because for Russians the most popular cuisine in the world is Italian: according to a recent survey by Delivery Fest-ResearchMe, out of 4,000 people interviewed, it is the first ranked with 32% of preferences.
But already at the end of 2019, the foodtech market in Russia has grown by 67% to over 45 billion rubles (excluding the restaurant delivery segment), thanks to new users have made online purchases, reaching 63 million, a growth of 40%, and the desire to learn more about food and wine through online courses on demand. And the e-grocery sector is also growing a lot according to Gazprombank: by the end of 2020, the market for online sales of food products will grow to 121 billion rubles (1,385,772,513 euros) from 42 billion rubles in 2019 (481,044,480 euros). In 2023, the market volume will reach 518 billion rubles (5,930,841,000 euros), in 2024 716 billion rubles (8,197,842,000 euros).