“Puglia is more than just an important partner for Italian exports: I would say it is essential, including in the field of fruit and vegetables, as we can see confirmed by the uptrend in all the figures. On the one hand quantitative numbers are significant but on the other there is the quality of the products that is increasingly recognised at international level,” said the Italian Ambassador in Berlin, Piero Benassi, after visiting the Apulian stand at Berlin’s Fruit Logistica 2017. He was accompanied by the Councillor for Agriculture of the Regional Council of Puglia, Leonardo Di Gioia. The Berlin fair is the most important European annual event in the fruit and vegetables sector with an exhibition space of 117,000 square metres (the equivalent of 14 football pitches) and 2,900 exhibitors from 83 Countries. If 2015 proved to be a record year for Apulia’s agricultural exports (for more than 800 million euros, closing a five-year period of unstopping growth), also for 2016, while waiting for the final figures, Unioncamere Puglia forecasts a positive trend that, regardless of the climate-linked catastrophes, estimates 750 million euros in direct exports.
The numbers of “Made in Puglia” products
“Made in Puglia” products represent over 12% of the agricultural products that Italy exports to foreign markets, and that are increasingly acknowledged also outside the borders of the European Union, considering its 240 million euros worth of total agricultural exports to the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, Africa and the Middle East. The three-day event in Berlin, which will run until 10 February, expects 70,000 professional visitors from more than 138 countries (20% of whom from America and Asia). Puglia is represented by more than 200 companies, 17 of which are hosted in the Region’s institutional stand managed by the Apulian Councillorship for Agriculture and Unioncamere Puglia.
