Italian pasta has a strong 2024

The food industry as a whole closed the year with favorable data, both on the production and export fronts, distancing itself from the broader national industry sector. The pasta sector, too, held its own, performing even better than the overall sector aggregate.

The numbers. The 2024 production of the national “food and beverage” sector showed an increase of +1.8% over the previous year. This is a noteworthy result, especially considering that it stands in contrast to the disappointing -3.5% decline in the total industrial sector. In practical terms, during a period of widespread decline in overall industrial production (which ended with a steep drop of -7.1% in December), the food sector was the only one to close the year with a positive production result.

This is no small feat. But it doesn’t stop there. Within the food sector, the pasta sector recorded an even greater production increase of +5.1%, making it one of the brightest performers in the food industry. Looking at exports. In the first ten months of the year (latest available data), the food industry achieved an export value of 47.4 billion euros, marking a +9.0% increase in value compared to the same period in 2023, with a corresponding +5.5% increase in quantity. I

n contrast, the national industrial sector showed stagnation, with a -0.4% decrease in value and a -2.6% decrease in quantity. The pasta sector also contributed positively to exports. It reached an export value of 3.6 billion euros for the first ten months, up +5.8% from January-October 2023, with a +10.6% increase in quantity. The fact that the quantity increase is higher than the value increase clearly indicates that the unit price of the pasta sold abroad has decreased. This aligns with the fact that production prices in the sector dropped by -4.2% during the year.

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