A Trio of Food Exhibitions in Verona

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

By Ylenia Granitto
Apr. 24, 2018 18:24 UTC
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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.





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