VINITALY 2018 - The biggest ever

At the start of the 52nd Edition scheduled at VeronaFiere from April 15th to 18th

The number of foreign exhibitors present in the International Wine Hall pavilion has increased by 25%; sold out of the spaces as early as December 2017; incoming commercial delegations selected from 58 countries; an average of professional operators coming from 140 nations each year (in 2017, 128 thousand total admissions of which 48 thousand from abroad, of which 30,200 buyers accredited by 142 countries).

Increasingly international, green and digital

A constant growth of the "green" offer with the ViVIT, VinitalyBio and Fivi areas; an innovative online directory with 4,319 exhibitors from 33 countries and 13,000 wines registered to date which, through an information portal in Italian, English and Chinese, allows a b2b matching throughout the year, designed along the line of the new digital services development envisaged by industrial plan.

These are some of the novelties and elements that characterize the 52 edition of Vinitaly, www.vinitaly.com International wine & spirits exhibition, the largest exhibition in the world for square meters and foreign presences dedicated to the wine and spirits sector.

Also this year Vinitaly is preceded by the international event OperWine, which opens on April 14th at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia, presenting 107 companies from all the Italian regions, selected by the American magazine Wine Spectator.

Vinitaly presents itself as a unique exhibition at an international level thanks to the coexistence of Sol & Agrifood, international exhibition of quality food, interactive exhibition through cooking shows, educational moments and tastings enhances the peculiarities of the agro-food and extra virgin olive oil olive in particular, and Enolitech, an international appointment with innovative technology applied to the wine and oil supply chain.

All linked by a set of starred chefs, wine & food pairing proposals, international tastings that make each edition of Vinitaly a unique vintage with appointments of technical-scientific training.

"Vinitaly has always declared itself as a service tool for the institutions and the business system, in terms of business and international relations", explains Maurizio Danese, president of Veronafiere. "The involvement of the exhibition in the extraordinary promotion plan of the made in Italy has been an important step to promote the Italian wine export in a unified way. In this sense, the collaboration we are carrying out with ICE Agency, in particular on the markets of China and the USA, is an operational modality that we hope will involve more and more actors in a project of aggregative logic. On the internal front, we continue the work begun in 2015 to enhance the professional profile of the visitor of Vinitaly and the presence of top buyers ".

The stated goal is to be more and more a platform for the business of the sector companies. Also for this reason, in 2018 Vinitaly proposes, in collaboration with Nomisma's Wine Monitor, the outlook on the future of the world markets for wine and a specific focus reserved for the USA, which will be followed by in-depth studies on China, Russia, Japan, United Kingdom and Germany. International markets that Vinitaly oversees throughout the year through the initiatives of Vinitaly International in Russia, USA, China, Hong Kong and Vinitaly International Academy in the same countries, as well as in Canada where for years it has formed ambassadors and experts working with Veronafiere to disseminate the knowledge of Italian wines and the incoming of operators - buyers, professionals in the ho.re.ca sector, influencers - at the annual fair in Verona.

An additional tool of knowledge and marketing is the 5StarWines-The Book guide, with the best wines of the world selected by Vinitaly.

"More and more foreign companies are realizing the opportunities that Vinitaly puts into play", commented Giovanni Mantovani, Veronafiere's general manager. "This is confirmed by the growth of exhibitors and the surface of the International_Wine Hall. On the incoming front, we have selected professionals from 58 countries on 5 continents. From the US, importers and distributors are increasingly present also from internal States. Canada is in Vinitaly with a delegation of representatives of the main Canadian provincial wine monopolies, in collaboration with ICE Agency. Two types of buyers were chosen from Russia: top importers with high turnover and smaller companies. For operators from China, we focused on first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but we also involved companies from second-tier cities, like Chengdu, and third, like Foshan. "

The recent establishment of the Verona Parma Exhibition (VPE) company has also kicked off the new WI.BEV exhibition for beverage technologies and the acquisition of 50% of Bellavita Expo, a company that promotes events in food and time also in wine in countries such as the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States of America, Canada, Mexico and Thailand. Lastly, through its subsidiary Veronafiere do Brasil, in February of this year, Veronafiere spa announced the new Wine South America exhibition (from 26 to 29 September 2018 in Bento Concalves, Rio Grande do Sul). South America wine. A "beige book" of initiatives that promises itself under the Vinitaly brand to raise the percentage of exports of wine and food products made in Italy, increasing above all the share in value and not just quantity.