PLM - COVER STORY
Private Labels
taking up the Sustainability Challenge Private label lines have led the charge in terms of dynamics on this issue in recent years. The sector’s 2019 turnover figures in Italy topped €10.8 billion, driving 80% of the food industry’s growth in the last 16 years. Consumption figures were hard hit in 2020. The COVID altar swept away $12.5 trillion of global GDP in just one year. The most recent forecasts for Italy stand at -10%, and our country will only return to pre-COVID levels in 2023 (or 2025 for the most pessimistic cases). However, the concern Italians have for sustainability remains one of the constants the pandemic has failed to banish. While 35% of the managers interviewed in the survey "Italia 2021, il Next Normal degli italiani" (Italy 2021, the Next Normal for Italians) believe that developing the green economy is one of the trends that will positively characterise the post-COVID era, this sort of national green awareness is nevertheless reflected in related purchases: 27% of the inhabitants of the “Bel Paese” buy more sustainable and eco-friendly products than before COVID (trailed by the French and Spanish at 18%) and 20% buy more from worker-friendly companies. The 2020 Coop Report found that over half of all consumers intend to buy mainly Made in Italy products, preferably sustainable ones, aspects considered important by 53% and 48% of the respondents respectively. The very concept of a sustainable product is now becoming more nuanced, with the concept of local production or production linked to the local area (among other things, 50% combine this with sustainability) and a controlled supply chain (49%) being added to the generic concept of being environmentally friendly. The principle of fair remuneration for the various actors in the chain also appears (47% of the sample mentioned it in connection with sustainability). The crisis (and a revival of plastic packaging) notwithstanding, the Italian shopping cart remains quite green, bucking the trend in many other
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