Borsari: Tradition and premium quality

Industria Dolciaria Borsari: the quality of leavened products for festivities sought after by the new consumer

Quality, history and method. These are just a few of the ingredients that allowed the Borsari Confectionery Industry (Idb) to tackle the crisis caused by the pandemic, keeping on planning the future of a group that today owns seven brands, three productive sites and exports in 62 countries with a quota of 20% of its revenue. A story like the Idb’s one starts in 1795 in Foligno with the Muzzi family and a confectionery tradition that reached the third generation and developed until it established itself with a retailing quota of 30% in the Italian mass market retail, becoming a garrison for the “premium” celebration market.

“After three really difficult campaigns, we are lucky we are here talking about this” sales director Paolo Barbero admits while speaking at the Cibus Lab and Gdo News workshop “Celebration cakes, the Italian tradition: Outlook and challenges”, also adding: “Covid put a strain on everybody, both as an industry and as a company, and during the following years we will have to work to retake everything we left on the ground. Idb has the ability, the strength and the opportunity to get back to the previous numbers, because during the following years quality will probably be the one to sustain this market made of intense activities focused on attracting the consumers.”

WATCH THE INTERVIEW TO PAOLO BARBERO
(Sales Director – Industria Dolciaria Borsari)

“Our presence in the premium sector, where we work with a price range going from nine to twenty euros per kilo, a range that is lately more discounted compared to the average eleven euro one, three times the one of the global market, is not just based on packaging sophistication, which still remains one of the fundamental aspects. Our main terms – Barbero explains – are linked to the very active research and development department, which constantly analyzes the consumer’s style and habits, bringing us toward tastes and recipes directions aimed to a medium-high target. It is an offer that is renovated yearly with ten or twelve new solutions, without ever disregarding the traditional method. A method characterized by a slow sourdough leavening with mixers equipped with beater arms typical of the confectionary industry but not of the factories. Machines that we multiplied during the last few years to increase the production capacity but without distort our origin. Today we have 36 of them that we pair with manual processing and with a packaging that, together with refined ingredients and selected raw ingredients, complete all of the variations within the quality market and the leavened products for festivity fields. Our quality is recognized on an international level as well, and this strengthens our daily activity”.

About the relationship with the mass market retail, Barbero observed: “Our 20% quota is still developable and supported by a quality production that still sees the independent channel as the biggest one. This is why we have offers and brands like “Giovanni Cova”, our key brand dedicated to supermarkets that taps into all the company’s productive sectors. It oversees the whole of the festivities trimester, although we start with the mignons in October to then later develop the Christmas offers. “Borsari” is the second brand we introduce to the mass market retail and it specializes in the Venetian tradition, which means it focuses on the production of pandoro in its every variation, even with exclusive specialties that this year we have offered for different tastes and with different packaging and purchase solutions. “Borsari” completes its range by including gift mignons and panettoni, because it wants to be a complete company and a reference point for the market. Last but not least is the brand “Bedetti”, which offers bakery products with references to other brands, dedicated lines and a packaging closer to a bakery one.”

Lastly, about the prices: “With the premium world – Barbero concluded – you get larger revenues and work in a vibrant, ever-growing environment. Today it is no longer a niche world, instead it covers a position that creates a substantial profit.”

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WATCH THE WORKSHOP