Two well-known names on the Italian wine market, Cantine Giacomo Montresor and Fantinel, have decided to invest in the Romanian wine industry by acquiring large amounts of land in Romania. The decision was made based on the fact that there are very few possibilities within the EU to plant new vineyards and on the rising potential of the Romanian market.
Sources from the Romanian wine industry say that Montresor, a player in the Verona region, recently acquired around 1,000 hectares of land in the Cranguri locality of Constanta county where they plan to plant grapevines and build a wine cellar. This means that Italian investors are becoming more interested in eastern Romania, with most of their investments so far having been focused on the western part of the country.
The Italians are buying land not only for cultivation, but also as an investment. "After EU integration, the value of land is likely to double," said Mario Moretti Polegato, honorary consul general to Romania for North-Eastern Italy.
Basil Zarnoveanu, the chairman of the National Inter-professional Winegrowing Organisation (ONIV), which represents the most important players on the Romanian wine market, says he has become aware of the recent moves on the market. "Italian investors are buying a lot because there are some extraordinary opportunities. Italy is the country with the most fragmented vineyards in the world, with over 700,000 winegrowers. Added to this, new plantation possibilities in the EU are few and far between, and investors are looking to new ways to grow. The Romanian winegrowing industry has a good chance of becoming as big an attraction to Italians as the Banat region has been, where Italian farmers dominate."
Another well-known Italian producer, Fantinel, also recently acquired around 1,000 hectares of land in Romania in the Buzau region, where it plans to develop a production centre. Fantinel has vineyards in Italy and Cuba. The business was first begun by Mario Fantinel, who later opened a number of wine bars in Italy. Fantinel is also one of the leading makers of prosciuto (a specialty ham) from Italy.
The best-known investment by an Italian investor in the Romanian wine industry belongs to Fabio Albisetti, who turned Vinarte Bucharest from a niche producer into a player with countrywide ambitions. A number of other small Italian investors have also invested in vineyards in the well-known wine regions of Romania (Dealu Mare and Moldova) over the past two years, where they have invested amounts of between 500,000 and 2 million euros in wine cellars and vineyards, in part using SAPARD funds.
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