Wine continues to run in large-scale distribution in 2021: double-digit growth in the first 2 months

Italian and worldwide catering is still at a standstill, or in the best case it lives of some "stop & go", among thousands of uncertainties, which strongly penalize not only restaurateurs, in great difficulty for months, but also the food and wine industry of higher quality. For a part of the wine supply chain (but not for everyone, especially thinking of the many small Italian wineries strongly unbalanced on catering), good news continues to come from the large-scale distribution (gdo), which has been the real pillar for the maintenance of consumption in the first year of the pandemic and continues to show very important growth rates, as told by Iri data on the first two months of 2021, analyzed by WineNews.

Overall, between Iper and supermarkets and small free service, January and February 2021, in Italy, have moved 301.2 million euros of wine, for 80.8 million liters, with a growth of +8.4% in volume over the same period 2020 (when the pandemic, it must be said, had not yet unfolded in Italy, ed), and especially +18.6% in value. A figure, the latter, which confirms once again that many Italians, with restaurants closed, have focused on wines of greater value and value to bring to the tables at home. Of course, the unit values are still low, as we are talking about 3,7 euros per liter, on average. However the trend is clear and it is mainly driven by bottled wines, which represent the majority of wines sold, both in volume and, above all, in value.

The classic 0.75 liter bottles, in fact, moved sales for 241.8 million euros (+23.1%), for 45.6 million liters (+14.3%), with an average price of 5.3 euros. Nonetheless, the fact that the crisis is weighing on the pockets of Italians is a given, and this, from the point of view of wine, can be seen in the confirmation of the carton as the second most important format both in value and volume, as well as in the significant growth of bag-in-boxes. In particular, the brik, which has an average price of 1.5 euros per liter, moved 31.5 million euros of wine in value (+1.4%) and 21.2 million liters in volume (+0.9%), while Bag in Box grew double-digit, although from much lower absolute values, making +24.2% in value (5.4 million euros) and +16.3% in volume (3 million liters), although with an average price of just 1.8 euros per liter. On the other hand, the “big bottles” segment, i.e., containers of up to 2 liters, declined, with an average price of 2.5 euros per liter between January and February, bringing in 14.7 million euros (down 0.8%) and 5.9 million liters (down 3%).