This year, the Fruit Attraction fair in Madrid celebrated its first 10 years. It started small, but today it has 70.000 visitors and 1.600 exhibitors – 10% of whom come from Italy. Also, the international scope of this event aided Spanish fruit and vegetable companies to start exporting even in non-EU countries.
These were the data presented by the exceptional guest, Raul Calleja, director of Fruit Attraction, at the roundtable entitled “Models and tool for the improvement of table grapes” during the 54th Grape Festival in Rutigliano.
The day before, Raul Calleja visited some top-level companies: Giugliano Puglia Fruit, Fra.Va and Orchidea Frutta. Raul stated, “I met an industrial, productive and human reality that shares our idea of supporting the growth of the sector: professional organizations, innovation, investment in brands. I had the opportunity to taste incredible grapes!”.
Raul Calleja
The Fruit Attraction director highlighted that he did not see Spanish and Italian productions as competitors, but rather as complementary.
Many others participated in that roundtable: the moderator Vincenzo Rutigliano (journalist), Giuseppe Porro (Purchasing Manager) Daniele Contini (climatologist), Giovanni Carlo di Rienzo (expert in post-harvesting) and Rossella Gigli (director of FreshPlaza.it).
Contini and Porro
Carlo Di Rienzo
Giuseppe Valenzano, the councillor of the Municipality of Rutigliano, hosted the roundtable.
Giuseppe Valenzano
Giacomo Suglia, director of the Nu. Va. UT consortium, and Donato Fanelli (coordinator of the Grape Product Committee) also took part.
At the end of the work, the Civic Committee of Rutigliano awarded those who worked and are working in the supply chain: nursery farmers, pruners, viticulturists, labourers, farmers and coordinators of industry associations.
Calleja and Valenzano
The roundtable represented a chance to discuss many crucial aspects, such as the logic of distribution, the tools supporting the grape sectors, the communication challenges, and the post-harvesting, thus opening new destinations to Italian grapes.
We will come back to these topics in future articles.