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ENG - Business Article - Barilla, Recipe For Success

Barilla, the world's largest pasta maker, saw increased demand during the pandemic as home cooks stocked up on dried pasta. Exports of Italian pasta increased 30% in the first half of 2020 compared to the previous year. While Italians consume the most pasta globally at 23kg per person annually, Italy exports 60% of its pasta production, mostly to Europe and America. Barilla operated factories at near full capacity during Italy's lockdown, producing 1000 tonnes of pasta per day, and dispatched dedicated trains to maintain supplies to Germany, one of its most important markets. The pandemic boom in pasta sales may continue as the food is inexpensive, versatile, and attractive for cash-strapped families globally.

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44 views1 page

ENG - Business Article - Barilla, Recipe For Success

Barilla, the world's largest pasta maker, saw increased demand during the pandemic as home cooks stocked up on dried pasta. Exports of Italian pasta increased 30% in the first half of 2020 compared to the previous year. While Italians consume the most pasta globally at 23kg per person annually, Italy exports 60% of its pasta production, mostly to Europe and America. Barilla operated factories at near full capacity during Italy's lockdown, producing 1000 tonnes of pasta per day, and dispatched dedicated trains to maintain supplies to Germany, one of its most important markets. The pandemic boom in pasta sales may continue as the food is inexpensive, versatile, and attractive for cash-strapped families globally.

Uploaded by

Daniel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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RECIPE FOR SUCCESS - On board the spaghetti express

Instructions - Read the article below. Underline the words you do not understand, pay special attention to
those in bold, and look them up in a dictionary. Then provide an example of a business whose revenues has
increased during the pandemic.

STOCKPILING PASTA BOOSTS ITALY’S FOODMAKERS


An Italian staple is a pandemic favourite

S
UPERMARKET SHELVES stripped bare by stockpilers its main warehouse in the country. Each train has 16
were familiar scenes as anxious shoppers loaded up wagons transporting 490 tonnes of pasta, 60 tonnes of
with toilet rolls and pasta when lockdowns were sauces and 50 tonnes of pesto. From June the trains ran
first imposed. The taste for long-lasting dried food has three times a week; soon they might make four journeys.
been a boon for Italy, a country in deep recession.
Although Italians remain the biggest eaters of pasta The question for Barilla and other pasta-makers is
worldwide, munching through 23kg per head annually, whether the boom will outlast the pandemic. Luigi
the country’s pasta-makers export 60% of their Cristiano Laurenza of the International Pasta Organisation
production, mostly to Europe and America. While stuck at is confident. Pasta consumption worldwide increased
home far more cooks made plates of spaghetti, fettuccine from 7m tonnes in 1999 to 16m tonnes last year, even
and farfalle. According to ISTAT, the Italian statistics before it became a pandemic staple. Italy may have lost
agency, exports of pasta its appetite a little in recent
increased by 30% in the years but there is room for
first six months of the year growth nearly everywhere
compared with the same else, in particular in Africa
period in 2019. and Asia. Pasta is cheap,
tasty and versatile, says Mr
Barilla, the world’s biggest Laurenza, making it
pasta-maker with sales of especially attractive for
€3.6bn ($4.2bn) last year, cash-strapped families
must keep up with battered by a pandemic.
increased demand for its
core product. The 143- It is especially important
year-old family firm also owns Wasa, the world’s biggest for Barilla that plates remain laden after a series of
maker of Swedish crisp bread, as well as a host of smaller missteps. In 2002 it spent €1.8bn on a hostile takeover of
snack brands. The company’s high-tech headquarters in Kamps, a German baker. It turned out to be a costly
Parma operated at close to capacity, producing 1,000 mistake and in 2010 Barilla sold Kamps to a private-equity
tonnes a day, throughout Italy’s harsh lockdown in spring. firm. In September 2013, Guido Barilla, the company’s
Some other Barilla factories produced more pasta than chairman, said that the firm’s family values meant that he
ever, says Bastian Diegel of Barilla in Germany, albeit at would not do a “commercial with a homosexual family”.
significantly higher cost thanks to the additional safety The comments provoked an outcry, in particular in
measures. It continued to make all of its 120 varieties. America, and threats of a boycott. Mr Barilla was forced
to apologise and the firm subsequently launched a
Maintaining supplies to Germany, one of Barilla’s most limited-edition pasta box showing two women sharing a
important markets, even required dedicated transport. kiss over spaghetti. Although cooking pasta requires
Starting in March the job of providing 22% of the pasta plenty of hot water, pasta-makers should stay out of it.■
and as much as 39% of the sauces eaten in Germany
meant dispatching two trains a week from Parma to Ulm,

Article published in The Economist on November 14th 2020 (https://www.economist.com/business/2020/11/14/stockpiling-pasta-boosts-


italys-foodmakers).

Daniel Bosch Ibáñez for Nista School of Languages Page 1 of 1

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