5.8 Million Tons Processed Puts Italy Back In Second Place

The 2025 tomato processing campaign in Italy, with 78,695 hectares under cultivation, closed with a production of 5.8 million tons, slightly up on 2024, but still lower (around -10%) than planned. 

Italy returns to being the second largest tomato processing country in the world after the United States and ahead of China, which, after the exploits of recent years, has drastically reduced production in light of difficulties mainly related to maintaining foreign market shares. Looking at the details, 2.71 million tons of tomatoes were processed in Central and Southern Italy (-5.3% compared to 2024), while in the Northern basin, the final processed amount was 3.12 million tons (+27.6% compared to last year).

The industry had to deal with a substantial increase in tomato prices compared to what had been budgeted, both in the North—where the high Brix degree resulted in a positive payment index, causing an increase in the price of the raw material compared to what had been negotiated—and in the Center-South, where, due to water supply difficulties, particularly in the Foggia area, and distortive behavior in the raw material supply phase, tomatoes recorded increases of up to 40% compared to the planned average price.

The season was also characterized by a decline in agricultural yields, which recorded their worst performance in the last five years. For whole peeled tomatoes, a typical Made in Italy product, the decline in agricultural yields, combined with that of industrial yields, led to a reduction in production of over 20%.

“The campaign that has just ended was particularly long and complex,” said Marco Serafini, President of ANICAV. “The delay in the ripening of the raw material led to longer processing times. Companies, particularly in central and southern Italy, were never able to operate at full capacity, resulting in a significant loss of economies of scale. In addition, increases in the price paid for tomatoes, which remains the highest in the world, created market distortions that seriously threatened to undermine the sector. It will therefore be a priority to start working towards rebalancing value throughout the supply chain, ensuring fair remuneration for agriculture, industry, and large-scale distribution, investing in innovation and research to improve agricultural and industrial yields, increase productivity, reduce production costs, optimize water and energy consumption, and make harvesting operations more efficient, especially in the Apulia basin.”

“The sector is being put to the test by the often difficult situations in the outlet markets and US customs policies,” says Giovanni De Angelis, General Manager of ANICAV. “Restoring dialogue between the agricultural and industrial sectors remains a priority. Interprofessionalism remains a useful and fundamental tool, but, particularly in the Central-Southern Basin, it is struggling to take off due to the difficulty of dialogue between the parties. Therefore, it is necessary to redefine the scope of competence and the operating model underlying interprofessional relations, where framework agreements remain an indispensable and central element. We have asked Masaf to create an institutional framework within which to operate in order to establish clear and binding rules. In the absence of a well-defined set of rules, it will be very difficult to imagine reaching an agreement for the next processing campaign.