Welcome to My Private Brand Talks a weekly interview series in which I will discuss the state of private brand, retail, and careers with retail executives and private brand thought leaders from around the world. This week’s episode features my conversation with Leo Nucera of Agritalia.

Agritalia is a family company based in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1987 by the brothers Sergio and Stefano Massa, Agritalia specializes in private label programs and the export of food products mainly from Italy to North America, which is the second-largest market for Italian specialties besides Europe. With a comprehensive portfolio of almost a thousand products sourced from certified suppliers located across Italy and the European Union, Agritalia represents an effective and simple solution for retailers to start private label projects from concept to re-orders.

The company has established its offerings on the four pillars of the Made in Italy Collection: extra virgin olive oil, pasta, pasta sauce and vinegar, on which it has acquired extensive expertise over the years. Then, the range has been extended to other categories such as gnocchi, polenta, couscous, gluten-free products, and more. Recently, Agritalia has also landed the world of non-food making its debut in the body-care aisle.

In addition, the company completes its offering by providing extensive services such as procurement, quality assurance, marketing, and logistics support, to look after all the phases of a project ensuring the highest flexibility

When it comes to operations and shipments, Agritalia is steadily backed by sister companies Agrilogistica and Agrusa.

Agrilogistica is a new state-of-the-art logistics platform strategically located near the main ports of Naples and Salerno (southern Italy) which employs the latest technologies to optimize distribution. The biggest innovation is the Automated Replenishment Program (ARP), an advanced logistics solution that allows to optimize freight consolidation and deliver even a single pallet directly to the regional distribution centers (DC’s), granting maximum flexibility even for small private label projects. The ARP is based on the Cloud Sourcing Intelligence (CSI), an advanced software able to analyze sales data from shelf to estimate the exact assortment needed from the retailer week by week to meet the demand, to help to manage production timeline, freight consolidation, and deliveries to DC’s accordingly.

Agrusa is based in New Jersey and provides major support by reducing importing complexities by offering services es such as but not limited to, customs clearance, deliveries via rail and road, marine insurance, product liability coverages, inventory management in public warehouses, EDI capabilities, and administrative services. The synergetic cooperation of the three companies provides outstanding benefits, most importantly no more out-of-stock and over-stock for private label programs on shelves.

Over time, the secret to success has been to always pay close attention to trends and evolutions in the food industry to shape the company’s business model to changes. As evidence of this engagement, in recent years Agritalia has been strongly committed to one of the most important topics of modern society: sustainability. Following the mission of developing a smarter supply chain, the company has started a significant collaboration with U.K.-based Sheffield University to study the eco-sustainable implications of Agritalia, and sister companies Agrilogistica and Agrusa, distribution model, and the consequent reduction of the environmental impact, food waste and carbon dioxide emissions in the retail industry.