Italy: Surprise! Fairtrade has escaped it’s niche

2006 was a golden year for certified Fairtrade products. In Italy the turnover amounted to 34,5 million euros (where as in 2005 it had been 30 million euros and in 2004 24 million) through about one hundred distribution points, mainly within the large scale distribution sector.

Out of all the products on sale, those that registered the biggest boom were Amazonian nuts, that reached a total of 60 tonnes while the sale of pineapple tripled in volume, exceeding 1,700 tonnes. Excellent results were also achieved in sales of rice (+42%), cane sugar (+34%) and fruit juice (+28%). 12% more bananas were also sold which is particularly significant in light of the current market liberalisation. Good results were also achieved for already consolidated products like cocoa-chocolate (+10%) and coffee(+6%) while honey and tea remained stationary.

2006 was also a year for roses, they were included into the fairtrade market in autumn last year and sold in Pam super and hyper markets. In only 2 months 140 thousand bouquets were sold. Towards the end of the year fair-trade cotton jeans also entered the market (sold in Iper, Celio and on the PostalMarket/La Redoute catalogue) as well as other clothing lines such as t-shirts, and sweaters; these innovative products have been favourably met by consumers.

A new awareness

Fairtrade?s market is therefore expanding; soon the Movimento Consumatori (Consumer?s Movement) will also feature amongst its members. The future scenario is becoming more and more encouraging, this is a belief that is shared by Transfair Italy?s vice-president Carlo Testini: ?We are happy with these results because they are due to consumer sensitivity which is relatively new and that has grown in the last years because of our consortium?s effectiveness in distributing our products across the whole territory, thereby reaching people in a very direct way. A second, but no less important factor is the ever increasing quality of our products and the excellent price/quality ratio we manage to maintain. These results lead us to hope that a fair market will soon develop and that solidarity will become an important feature of the economy?.

www.equo.it