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2024 will be the summer of raspberry and rosemary flavored ice cream, but also that of the return to tiramisu flavour. It’s difficult to think about cones and cups today, with the cold and rain still enveloping a spring that is slow to take off. Yet, as soon as the heat arrives, ice cream consumption will start again and indeed, this year it will grow by 6%, with peaks of 12% in art cities, where tourists are looking for refreshment.
The forecasts come from the observatory of Sigep, the international exhibition of artisanal desserts that the Italian exhibition group organizes every year at the Rimini Fair (the next edition will be from 18 to 22 January 2025). In the five largest European countries – Italy, Spain , France, Germany and Great Britain – last year 2.2 billion ice creams were sold, with a growth of 4.7% compared to 2022. Our country remains the main market, with 28% of the servings ice cream served.
What flavors will we find this summer in artisanal ice cream shops? According to Giancarlo Timballo, master ice cream maker and president of the Ice Cream World Cup, the trend will be to create new flavors by drawing from local traditions and working on local products: his proposal is raspberry with rosemary. For the Roman Eugenio Morrone, however, customers will pay more and more attention to products with little sugar and little fat. Dairy-free ice creams will be very popular: not only with fruit, but also prepared with cocoa mass or pistachio. Tiramisu flavour, a great classic of the cones of the past, already seems to be popular among foreign tourists. Finally, Domenico Belmonte from Campania is ready to bet on the return of creams, but also on the boom in exotic fruit, including mango and passion fruit.
In Spain in the last two years the trend has been to purchase ice cream with low sugar content, but classic flavors such as nougat, vanilla and chocolate remain. Here too, the prospects for summer 2024 are optimistic, with an increase in consumption expected between 3% and 5%. German consumers, however, remain fond of the great classics but without giving up their curiosity for new things: Dario Fontanella, founder of an ice cream shop in Mannheim, Germany, offers for example a white chocolate ice cream with asparagus, typical of the Baden-Württemberg region, but also a bergamot cone with curry and wasabi.