Food Made in Italy: opportunities and pitfalls of export

Food Made in Italy: opportunities and pitfalls of export. The speech by Micheal Seider, Vice President of the American giant Performance Food Group

Italy is never questioned for the quality of the products it expresses, the problem can sometimes be represented by convenience, understood as the combination of opportunities for importing a product without equal, able to give a real added value to the advantage of those who buy it, or not.

The logic of export strategies, therefore, are absolutely identical to those that exist in domestic markets. This is what emerged from the interesting speech by Michael Seider, Vice President of Performance Food, the second largest commercial catering company in the United States, after Sysco.

“Performance Food Group is the second largest company in collective catering, serving national chains and independent pizzerias, but also schools, universities” explains its Vice President Michael Seider at the Webinar LIVE of the CIBUS LAB platform, created by GDONews and Fiere di Parma Cibus with the sponsorship of ICE and the Emilia Romagna Region.

There are more than 125 thousand customers of this American B2B food distribution giant that generates revenues of more than 25 billion dollars per year.

Italy is a decidedly strategic country for the group that imports hundreds and hundreds of containers from our country.

“We consider Italy strategic especially for your dry products, such as pasta, extra virgin olive oil, sauces and peeled tomatoes, of which we import hundreds and hundreds of containers every year. We also look with interest at different products, such as frozen food, but it is clear that in our evaluations we must consider the combination of production cost and transport cost with what our domestic market offers.” The theme of competitiveness clearly emerges in Micheal Seider’s speech, and “The quality and taste of your frozen products are not an obstacle, if anything the problem can be in the cost of production together with the transport of the goods, compared to products purchased directly in the United States, it is sincerely easier to buy a good frozen pasta produced in the United States, often from factories owned by Italian immigrants and now Americans.”

The theme of competition clearly emerges in markets where we are not able to express a strong quality gap.

Micheal Seider concludes his speech with a challenge, the one that his company is facing today and which is identified in the perfection of supply chain management by the different producers disseminated in the USA and around the world and their Cedi: “Our challenge is to improve business and imports through a supply chain that is as perfect as possible, where what is ordered must correspond to what is delivered and in the shortest time possible with the lowest costs.”

Optimizing the supply chain results in increased margin, and consequently increased competitiveness. Italy, flag of quality in different product categories, strategic in all markets around the world, must be able to win the challenge suggested by Seider in order to be competitive even in the various domestic markets.