New chairman and projects for Veronamercato

A fresh wind is blowing through Veronamercato, the fruit and vegetable wholesale market of the city of Verona. Since summer 2015 this organisation has been headed by a new chairman, Gianni Dalla Bernardina, who took over from Erminia Perbellini and has new projects for the market.

“My starting point is that Veronamercato cannot be just a place where fruit and vegetables are sold: it needs to be endowed with services that can be used by both internal and external operators,” Dalla Bernardina said. ”It needs to become a platform with a major logistics component rather than remaining just a market that handles and sorts goods.“

There is certainly no lack of new developments in the pipeline:

“By May the Verona commodity exchange will be moving in with us,” he said. “We have also acquired 34% of a laboratory company and are working towards their transferring their operational headquarters here as well. When that happens, laboratories for European and international certificates will be available to both internal and external operators, for whom Veronamercato will become a service centre.”

As a result, Veronamercato is looking to take on a new, central role in future in delivering services.

“As things are at present, 80% of our activity is to do with trade and only 20% with logistics and business services,” Dalla Bernardina said.

“We want to develop this latter aspect. Nowadays we are handling 360,000 tonnes of produce, of which 180,000 are for export. While many Italian fruit and vegetable markets are still anchored to local supplies and volume retailers, our vocation is international – also because of our geographical position – and we want to strengthen it still further,” he said.