Brexit Leads to Sharp Decline in UK Imports of Italian Foods

Italian olive oil stocks in the United Kingdom are shrink­ing.

In the first five months of 2021, Italian extra vir­gin olive oil imports fell by 13 per­cent. Shipments of other core ingre­di­ents of the Mediterranean diet have fallen too. Imports of pasta dropped by 28 per­cent, and tomato sauce ship­ments fell 16 per­cent.

Italian cheeses and wines are also decreas­ing their mar­ket shares in the U.K.

The Italian farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, placed the blame for all of this squarely on Brexit. They warned that lengthy admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures, over­sized bor­der con­trols and exces­sive bureau­cracy are putting ship­ping oper­a­tions worth up to €3.4 bil­lion per year at risk.

Coldiretti data regard­ing Italian olive oil exports to the U.K. match those reported in Spain. In the first months of 2021, Spanish olive oil exports to the U.K. fell by 35 per­cent, with Spanish offi­cials also cit­ing increased bureau­cratic hur­dles as one of the rea­sons for the slow­down.

Should this neg­a­tive trend con­tinue, Italian exporters will be sig­nif­i­cantly impacted since the U.K. is their fourth mar­ket, in terms of vol­ume, behind Germany, France and the United States.

According to a recent study cited by Federvini, the Italian wine pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, 95 per­cent of British con­sumers buy Italian prod­ucts in the super­mar­kets in the post-Brexit era.

A fur­ther 66 per­cent of the British shop­pers like to buy Italian food prod­ucts and con­sider them among the top three in the world, in terms of qual­ity. This goes up to 70 per­cent when shop­pers under 55 years of age are con­sid­ered.

Given the cur­rent hur­dles for Italian imports, Coldiretti noted that the tra­di­tional love for the Italian prod­ucts in the U.K. might boost the pros­per­ous mar­ket of coun­ter­feit goods that are pack­aged to look like Italian-made ones or mar­keted with names that resem­ble those of true Italian food spe­cial­ties.

Coldiretti said that this was a real risk since cases of coun­ter­feit prod­ucts with a Protected Designation of Origin or Protected Geographical Indication, rang­ing from Prosecco wine to Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, have pre­vi­ously been iden­ti­fied in the U.K.

“The United Kingdom could become the Trojan horse for Made-in-Italy fake food, a mar­ket val­ued at €100 bil­lion per year whose main oper­a­tors are in the United States, which may become a priv­i­leged com­mer­cial part­ner for the U.K.,” Coldiretti added.

“The British need to watch out for Italian-branded olive oil and parme­san with an Italian flag on the label, which actu­ally comes from America,” Coldiretti’s Lorenzo Bazzana told The Times of London. ​“Before Brexit, we could ask the U.K. to crack down on fake Italian foods, but now that it is out of the E.U., we can­not. Hence our fear that things could turn for the worse there.”

“We have already seen it hap­pen in Russia, where the moment sanc­tions stopped Italian food arriv­ing, Russian parme­san, com­plete with the Italian flag, appeared in stores,” he added.

The reduc­tion of food import vol­umes is sig­nif­i­cant for British con­sumers too. According to the British Retail Consortium, 30 per­cent of all food eaten in the U.K. comes from abroad. The largest por­tion of those imports is fresh veg­eta­bles and fruits, most of which come from Europe.

• Coldiretti
• Federvini
• BBC