MILAN - First, put the brakes on production, then hit the gas on exports. For the first time since the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium was established, sales abroad have surpassed domestic sales in volume.

The shift comes without weakening the cheese’s deep ties to its traditional production areas. If anything, the Consortium wants to strengthen the connection between a premium product and the territory that produces it - a relationship that can also help boost tourism.

That, in a nutshell, was the message at the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium’s annual meeting with the business community in Milan.

The meeting

At Palazzo dei Giureconsulti in Milan, the Consortium’s top officials - President Nicola Bertinelli, Director Riccardo Deserti, Marketing Director Carmine Forbuso and Destination Manager Cristiano Casa, each outlined, in their respective areas of responsibility, the course Parmigiano Reggiano will need to follow in the coming years.

On the pricing front, the average annual price of 12-month Parmigiano Reggiano reached €13.22 per kilogram, up 20.6% from 2024. For 24-month cheese, prices rose 24.8%, from €12.50 to €15.59 per kilogram in 2025.

Meanwhile, the Consortium’s Member-Producer Assembly, held Wednesday in the Parma area, reported a net profit of €192,679, compared to €158,447 in 2024.

Strip away the rhetoric, and 2025 really does have a chance to go down in history as a pivotal year for the future of the PDO.

And not only because of the shift in consumption patterns, which Bertinelli attributed on the one hand to Italy’s demographic decline and on the other to the erosion of the middle class, whose shrinking purchasing power is forcing households to cut back on some expenses.

The year will also be remembered for the decision – also approved by the cheesemakers at an assembly, that Bertinelli called historic - to rein in production, even at the cost of painful measures for producers who rise before dawn each morning to perform what he called Parmigiano Reggiano’s “secular miracle.”

At the same time, the Consortium is looking to the world and the daily challenges of international markets, where geopolitical uncertainty has reached unprecedented levels, with the optimism of those who know which course to chart, if only because, for now, there is no alternative.

Prices and consumption

Consumer sales reached €3.96 billion, with more than half of that total recorded outside Italy for the first time. In Italy, sales have fallen by about 10%.

The decline has been driven more by the quantities purchased, including smaller cuts and lower pieces, than by the number of consumers.

“Purchases have certainly become less frequent, and people may also be buying smaller quantities. After all,” Bertinelli said by way of comparison, “it’s not as if people who buy Champagne do so because they need a white sparkling wine for dinner.”

Other markets

With Italians’ wallets getting tighter, the PDO is changing course and turning decisively toward foreign markets. But those markets are hardly free of uncertainty.

The United States is a case in point, as the leading foreign market for Parmigiano Reggiano. “I remain optimistic,” Bertinelli explained, “even though uncertainty is currently prevailing and, above all, weighing on buyers who, for example, were ready to purchase before the outbreak of the latest conflict in the Middle East but have now put their plans on hold.”

Marketing is key

Carmine Forbuso, the Consortium’s Marketing Director, outlined plans to invest more than €34 million in promoting the product, an icon of Made in Italy that is making its mark around the world through sponsorships of major events and teams, from the Super Bowl to the Miami Masters 1000 tennis tournament and, back in Italy, Milan’s Salone del Mobile and Vinitaly.