Ready-made sauces are a category that is becoming increasingly important on large-scale retail shelves every year. The producers are often the same ones who process the tomatoes, but in terms of market share in large-scale Italian retail trade (and international markets), it is consistently the large semolina pasta producers that express them through their own brands.
It's no coincidence that in Italy and around the world, the benchmark is Barilla and not Mutti, for example. Barilla, whose core business is semolina pasta, owns the largest ready-made sauce plant in Europe in the town of Rubbiano (PR).
Besides Barilla, to be fair, the most significant competitors are medium-sized companies that have established themselves over time in a very fertile market.
The category finds various sales expressions in Italy, given that it is present both on the shelves with the "ambient" product, and in the refrigerators where fresh sauces are kept, and it is also increasingly present in the frozen food sections.
In short, it's a part of the product range that deserves study and attention, and for this reason, the special issue dedicated to the sector represents an important reference for understanding the offering and its reflection in sales figures.
The special, as always, was created in collaboration with Nielsen IQ and the graphs shown in all the articles are elaborations by GDONews on data updated at the end of January 2024, therefore very recent.
