In August, Italian industrial producer prices rose 10,9% compared to a year earlier, but this figure masks very different trends across sectors. While energy price increases are pushing the overall index higher, prices for the food, beverage, and tobacco industries are 1,7% lower than they would be in August 2025. This is the figure most relevant to the agri-food sector in the report released by Istat.
The annual decline affects both the domestic market, where producer prices fell 1,8%, and the foreign market, which fell 1,1%. However, a difference emerges within export markets: in the eurozone, prices are 0,6% higher than a year earlier, while in non-eurozone countries they decreased by 2,7%. The data refer to the aggregate that includes food, beverages, and tobacco and do not allow the performance of individual activities to be distinguished in this table.
Compared to July, the picture is different. Producer prices in the sector rose by 0,4% overall, with a 0,7% increase in the domestic market. Abroad, however, they decreased by 0,3%, falling to 0,6% in non-euro markets, while in the eurozone they were limited to 0,2%. The increase observed in Italy in the last month therefore coexists with levels still lower than those of last August.
A comparison with the manufacturing sector as a whole highlights the uniqueness of the agri-food sector. For manufacturing activities, ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) reports an annual price increase of 7,1%, reaching 8,8% on the domestic market. Over the same period, the general industrial index grew by 13,5% in Italy. Energy accounts for much of this gap: domestic electricity and gas prices increased by 26,3% year-over-year, compared to 14,7% in July. Excluding the energy sector, domestic industrial price growth stands at 3,3%.
Non-durable consumer goods, a grouping that includes food and beverages, also showed more moderate growth than the overall index: prices fell 0,3% year-over-year, despite increasing 0,2% compared to July. However, this is a broader category than agri-food, which also includes products from other sectors.
The numbers therefore portray a food industry that, compared to its year-on-year performance, is moving in the opposite direction to the strong rise in the overall index. The monthly increase in domestic prices deserves attention in upcoming surveys, but alone does not indicate a consolidated reversal. Producer prices also measure how much companies earn for the products sold: they do not directly reflect the trend in prices paid by consumers on the shelves.
