The export of flowers and plants soars at + 31% and exceeds pre-Covid levels

A jump of + 31% in exports of plants and flowers made in Italy in 2021 with the recovery of the dramatic step backwards recorded during the same period of the Covid pandemic. This is what emerges from Coldiretti’s analysis of Istat data relating to the first seven months of the year on the occasion of the General States of Italian horticulturalists in Giarre in Sicily on the green future of cities. In 2021, foreign requests for Made in Italy greenery exceeded even the pre Covid levels of 2019 and according to Coldiretti projections by the end of the year they will be able to touch the value of 1.4 billion euros with a + 55% compared to 2020 . Almost all (94%) of exports of Italian plants and flowers – explains Coldiretti – is directed to Europe with three countries, Germany, France and Holland, which concentrate more than half (58%) of purchases of Italian flowers with significant growth in 2021: + 47% for France, + 17% for Germany and + 25% for Holland. “Exports could grow even more with the removal of often spurious phytosanitary blocks which – underlines Coldiretti – still exist for Italian nursery productions in some countries”. With Brexit, for example, the concerns of the horticultural sector are linked above all to the new phytosanitary rules not in line with EU legislation with increasingly complex border controls, between delays and bureaucracy. But threatening the recovery of the horticultural sector is now the surge in production costs with increases of up to 25% in raw materials for packaging, energy, fertilizers and transport, also due to the lack of logistics and infrastructures of the Italian system.