The Spanish Chocolate, Biscuit, & Confectionery Association (Produlce) has reported export growth of 7.9 percent in 2014, offsetting a domestic decline of 1.1 percent. As a result, total Spanish confectionery sales rose by 2.6 percent in volume (1.3 million tons) and in value by 1.1 percent (€4.495 billion) in 2014. Nearly 35 percent of the total volume produced in Spain was exported, up from 32.1 percent in 2013, representing 451,710 tons of  volume and €1.151 billion in sales.

At last week’s Sweet Summit, a meeting place for stakeholders involved in the country’s confectionery and related industries, the association released its Produlce 2015 Report  to 100 professionals.

The report, which collects the main industry’s economic data, detailed the sector’s value to the Spanish economy. The confectionery segment ranks seventh in sales within the Spanish food and drink industry as a whole and fifth in terms of exports.

Total per capita consumption of sweets within the Spanish confectionery industry, which includes confectionery and chewing gum, cocoa and chocolate, fine bakery wares, nougat, and marzipan, stood at 22.96 kilos, with the biscuit and  cocoa and chocolate categories representing the largest segments at 8.19 and 7.11 kilos, respectively.

Cocoa and chocolate makes up the largest subsegment of Spanish confectionery sales, about 36 percent, followed by bakery wares, 23.1 percent; biscuits, 21 percent; gum, 12.8 percent; and turron and marzipan, 7.4 percent.

Sweet Summit was held the same day as Produlce’s general assembly. This assembly ratified a new executive committee, as well as a new president, Olga Martínez, Wrigley’s senior manager of corporate affairs. Her term in office runs from July 2015 to July 2017.

Martínez steps forward "with a huge desire to continue working for and because of the entire sector. My objectives for these next two years are to gain visibility as the reference voice of the sector and to increase our representativeness.”

The Spanish Sweet Association (Produlce) consists of 54 companies, divided into five different categories: sugar confectionery and chewing gum, cocoa and chocolate, biscuits, fine bakery wares, turron (nougat) and marzipan. It is a non-profit organization, representing 75 percent of the Spanish market.