Relationships

Gruppo Italiano Vini is the largest wine grower/producer in Italy, with consolidated revenues amounting to €348 million in 2013 (a 3.2 percent increase over the previous year), and it is a global leader in the production and sales of excellent wines. Founded in 1986, the group’s capital consists of 15 historic cellars that are located in their own evocative vineyards and situated in Italy’s most prestigious areas, with their own brands that are distributed worldwide. This company offers a vast selection of Italian wines, and it declares itself “extremely versatile and able to respond to the demands of a constantly changing market.” The particular structure of Gruppo Italiano Vini is a distinct advantage. Their story began with a group of eight cooperative wineries that purchased the totality of the Gruppo Italiano Vini shares from Credito Svizzero, and then transformed the group into a second-level cooperative company. It followed a continuous growth but kept the main focus on growers, and at the same time continued to manage an essentially vertically integrated supply chain while optimizing logistics as well as marketing. In 1987, Gruppo Italiano Vini acquired a foreign marketing company: Carniato SA of Paris. Six years later it took over the American importer Frederick Wildman & Sons Ltd. During the years that followed, the group completed further takeovers and opened foreign agencies: this took the number of group-owned companies—subsidiary and/or associated—to ten, thereby reinforcing its presence in countries where it was already established with its own structure, while creating new structures in countries that revealed high development potential.