A Trio of Food Exhibitions in Verona

Sol&Agrifood, the inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion of qual­ity agro-foods took place from 15 to 18 April at Veronafiere, in Verona, together with Enolitech, the inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion of olive oil and wine acces­sories and tech­nolo­gies, and Vinitaly, the world largest exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cated to wine sec­tor.

Sol&Agrifood was a show­case for agri­cul­tural and food excel­lence with a spe­cial focus on extra vir­gin olive oil, where more than 300 com­pa­nies showed their high-qual­ity prod­ucts to vis­i­tors from all over the world (56,500 in 2017) in an area of 9,000 square meters. The event aimed to high­light the ter­ri­to­ri­al­ity and qual­ity of raw mate­ri­als along with the pro­duc­tion meth­ods of local Italian and inter­na­tional tra­di­tions. In addi­tion to the exhi­bi­tion premises, spaces were ded­i­cated to hap­pen­ings designed to involve buy­ers and oper­a­tors.

Interesting insights emerged dur­ing the open­ing event, which was held in the pres­ence of the pres­i­dent of Veronafiere, Maurizio Danese, the direc­tor gen­eral for inter­na­tional affairs of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Felice Assenza, the head of the Technical and Environmental Unit of the International Olive Council, Abdelkrim Adi, the pres­i­dent of the Italian Association of Geographical Indication Consortia AICIG, Cesare Baldrighi, and the direc­tor gen­eral of the Institute for ser­vices to the agri­cul­tural and food Market Ismea, Raffaele Borriello.

After the AICG dis­cussed the role of Italian food and agri­cul­tural excel­lence at the national and European lev­els, the ISMEA pre­sented pro­jec­tions on cur­rent Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion which, accord­ing to the Institute, is expected to amount to 435,000 tons fol­low­ing an upward trend com­pared with last year. Moreover, dur­ing the talk ​‘EVOlutions of taste: points of view on the con­sumer of olive oil of today and tomor­row,’ it emerged that ​“con­sumers in the younger age groups like mil­len­ni­als are very inter­ested in the ori­gin of prod­ucts, ter­ri­to­ri­al­ity and health aspects. Therefore, it will be use­ful to invest in infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to con­sumers, deep­en­ing these aspects,” pointed out Ismea’s pres­i­dent.

The IOC pro­vided an overview of the world mar­ket of extra vir­gin olive oil and pre­sented pre­lim­i­nary find­ings of a research on the impact of olive oil pro­duc­tion on the envi­ron­ment. Provisional data, which are being ver­i­fied, show that, thanks to the great CO2 absorp­tion capac­ity of the olive tree, the world pro­duc­tion of olive oil could absorb the emis­sions of a city of more than 7 mil­lion inhab­i­tants such as Hong Kong.

In the wake of these promis­ing reports, atten­dees had the oppor­tu­nity to fol­low cook­ing shows on the use of extra vir­gin olive oil with cooked and raw food per­formed by the Italian Chefs Federation FIC, the actor/cook Andy Luotto and the chef Giorgio Barchesi known as Giorgione, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the inter­re­gional asso­ci­a­tion of Verona olive oil pro­duc­ers AIPO.

During the event, a selec­tion of award-win­ning oils at the Sol d’Oro com­pe­ti­tion was pre­sented with the oppor­tu­nity to taste them, while ​“The Stars of Sol d’Oro” guide was dis­trib­uted to buy­ers and oper­a­tors.

360 oils from sev­eral coun­tries par­tic­i­pated in the Sol d’Oro Northern Hemisphere, where Italy con­firmed its lead­er­ship in the pro­duc­tion of qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils, earn­ing 12 medals in five cat­e­gories, fol­lowed by Spain with three awards.

The final of the Sol d’Oro Southern Hemisphere was held in Osaka, Japan from 11 to 15 September 2017; the Sol d’Oro Northern Hemisphere took place in Verona from 14 to 19 February and cul­mi­nated in the Evoo Days.

This new ini­tia­tive con­sisted of a train­ing and net­work­ing forum on the qual­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil, con­ceived by Veronafiere and Sol&Agrifood to pro­vide knowl­edge on olive oil pro­duc­tion, mar­ket­ing and export­ing. The next edi­tion is sched­uled for February 2019.

The next edi­tion of Sol&Agrifood will be held from 7 to 10 April 2019 along with Vinitaly.

• Sol&Agrifood


• Sol d’Oro