Mercabarna's Observatory of Trends presented its second study on online food commerce. The meeting, which took place on the 27th April at the Food Fair, brought together around one hundred professionals.

A tsunami of opportunities. This was the expression used by the author of the study, Ricard Madurell, to define the potential of e-commerce to sell food.  It's the second time that Mercabarna's Observatory for Trends has studied the implications of Internet sales, a business model that is growing exponentially and strongly.

Although data on online trade as a whole is positive, the food sector is still at a very early stage. In fact, currently 2.2% of the volume of sales made over the Internet are for food products. However, all the statistics indicate that fresh products will be key to boosting e-commerce in food, and companies are in time to join this trend.

Experiences of five companies in digital commerce

The session was completed with a round table of professionals who also sell their products over the Internet - as is the case of Alfonso Jimenez, President of Cascajares, and Nuria Gustems, Manager of Gran Blau -or who are online trading platforms like Javier Barcelona, who is responsible for Condisline; David Campoy, Commercial Director of Ulabox, and Gemma Sorigué, CEO of Deliberry-. 

Some figures from the study

• The expected turnover for Spain in 2016 is 25,600 million euros
• 48% of Spaniards shop online once a month
• Consumers spend €70 on average shopping on the Internet
• 13% of online food buyers buy fresh produce