Ukraine, Divella: “Grain supply problems for Italy”

The supply of wheat and derivative products will be a problem for the milling sector and for the whole Italian agro-food sector after the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine. And if the situation continues or worsens, with sanctions on Russia and a stop to exports, Italian companies in the sector will have to source grain from other markets, with a consequent increase in prices for consumers. “Today one of our ships was blocked which had to go to load high quality Russian protein wheat in the port of Rostov”, in the Azov Sea, explains to Adnkronos Vincenzo Divella, managing director of the Divella pasta factory, which produces a thousand tons every day. of dry pasta, 35 tons of fresh pasta and 90 tons of biscuits. “This morning navigation in the Black Sea was blocked and our ship cannot enter. For some items, such as soft and durum wheat, our milling and milling sector will have problems.” Ukraine and Russia, Divella recalls, have always been “Europe’s food and grain reservoirs. If you don’t go there, you have to go to Canada, the United States or Australia, much farther away. We will certainly have problems” . Meanwhile, the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on commodities, not just energy, were immediate. On the commodity exchanges in Paris and Chicago, wheat prices “rose by 40 and 50 points respectively. This is just the beginning of sharp increases in the price of wheat,” Divella says. And if the crisis and the increase in food raw materials continue for a long time, the products will inevitably increase even more for final consumers. In the short term, however, prices may not rise, because “it must be said that every miller has stocks of wheat. If he wants to be a profiteer, he immediately increases prices, but if the crisis passes and the wheat returns to normal, there shouldn’t be any increases “, continues the CEO of the Divella pasta factory. In this sense, the strengthening of the dollar, Divella predicts, will cause “further problems in the purchase, because we have to pay more for the wheat we import”. And since Italy has to import 20 and 30 million quintals of wheat every year, “this is a further damage to imports”. The entrepreneur prefers not to go into the merits of the conflict in Ukraine, but about the solutions, he says “Europe should be worried too, more than the United States”.