Oct. 2 – “The training process is a unique opportunity for business internalization and, in times of crisis, it will likely become an even more strategic opportunity to become competitive,” says Riccardo Monti, president of ICE, during the presentation of “Taste,” a higher education project dedicated to food industry operators. The aim is to meet the internationalization needs of small and medium-sized Italian companies. “Taste” aka Techniques for the analysis of consumption and the development of internationalization, was developed in cooperation with Federalimentare and Education Systems Confindustria, with funding by Fondimpresa and a technical partnership with ICE, the Agency for the promotion abroad and the internationalization of Italian firms, and Istat. Companies in the food industry need to understand consumption patterns and buying behavior characteristics through an analysis of national and foreign dynamics. “The project – says Constanza Patti, CEO for Education Systems Confindustria – promotes active labor policies and experimentation, because it combines public and private entities. This collaboration is a significant part of the investments that Confindustria is carrying out to ensure the competitiveness of our agri-food production system.” The plan was established to train and equip the sector’s professionals with technical expertise, managerial and business techniques, commercial, marketing, promotion and administration skills. Overall the aim is to allow single SMEs to read the market signals and carry out in-depth consumer surveys through which they can enhance domestic production and international relations. In this sense, ” statistics – said Tommaso Di Fonzo , director of the School of Statistics and Social and Economic Analysis (Istat) – can be a powerful tool for Italian companies.” According to Filippo Ferrua Magliani, president of Federalimentare – Taste is a strategically important initiative, part of a development path that has always seen the food industry at the forefront.” The training project was developed as a pilot model, focused on internationalization and market analysis, essentially replicable and extensible in the future to all the main categories of Italian production represented in Confindustria’s sector federations.
