Market evolution: Durum wheat pasta (CN 19021910) — 2015–2025

Introduction

This report examines the EU's external trade in uncooked pasta not containing common wheat flour or meal or eggs (customs code 19021910) over the period 2015–2025. This product category covers essentially durum-wheat-based dry pasta — a quintessential European export. The EU is overwhelmingly a net exporter of this product: its trade surplus widened from €827 million in 2015 to over €1.51 billion by 2025, while net import reliance remained deeply negative throughout (between −28% and −49%), confirming the EU's structural role as the world's dominant supplier. The decade saw robust volume growth, a pronounced price surge in 2021–2022, and a marked concentration of both exports and production in Italy. The analysis below is organised around three main dynamics.

1. A decade of sustained export expansion, driven by value more than volume

Export values nearly doubled while quantities grew by 41%

Over the full period, EU exports of CN 19021910 rose from €857 million (2015) to €1.57 billion (2025), a gain of 83% (trade overview). Exported volumes grew more modestly, from 823 thousand tonnes to 1.16 million tonnes (+41%). The gap between the two growth rates is explained by a 30% rise in unit export prices, which climbed from €1,041/t to €1,350/t. In other words, roughly one-third of the value growth came from higher prices rather than additional tonnes shipped.

Imports grew faster in percentage terms but remain marginal in absolute terms

EU imports rose from €29 million to €60 million (+105%), and from 23 thousand to 43 thousand tonnes (+86%). Despite this faster growth rate, imports remained less than 4% of the size of exports. The trade overview shows the trade surplus widened consistently, reaching its peak at €1.56 billion around 2023–2024 before settling at €1.51 billion in 2025.

EU production underpins the export surge

Available production data shows EU output of this pasta category grew from roughly 2.9 billion kg to 4.8 billion kg (+66% by volume) and from €2.0 billion to €6.6 billion by value (+223%). The sharper rise in production value versus production volume mirrors the global commodity price inflation of 2021–2023, during which durum wheat costs spiked. Export propensity — the share of production shipped outside the EU — hovered between 23% and 35%, indicating that while the EU is a major exporter, the bulk of output still serves the internal market (export propensity).

2. Shifting geography: the United States emerges as the key growth market

The United States overtook the United Kingdom as the largest single-destination market by value

Among export partners, the United States showed the most dramatic growth. EU pasta exports to the US surged from €178 million in 2015 to €454 million in 2025 (+155%), making it the single largest destination by value — surpassing the United Kingdom, which grew more slowly (from €205 million to €331 million, +62%).

Canada also recorded explosive growth (+158%), suggesting a broader North American appetite for European durum pasta.

On the import side, Viet Nam and Tunisia saw the sharpest increases

EU imports by partner remained dominated by Türkiye (€6.7 million → €14.3 million), but Viet Nam grew the most in both absolute and relative terms (€2.5 million → €14.8 million, +491%). Tunisia's imports, starting from a very low base (€96,000), surged to €1.7 million — a near-complete structural shift likely reflecting the opening of new processing capacity in North Africa targeting EU markets.

Export concentration increased, reflecting Italy's growing dominance

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for exports by value rose from 1,158 to 1,406 (+21%). Italy alone accounted for €775 million of the €857 million total in 2015 (90%) and €1.41 billion of €1.57 billion in 2025 (90%). The absolute scale of Italy's dominance barely changed in share terms, but the growing HHI suggests that other EU members have not kept pace. Notably, Germany's exports grew from €5 million to €34 million (+556%), and Ireland from €0.2 million to €1.3 million — but these remain marginal against Italy's volumes. Italy's Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) stands at 0.81 with an RCA of 9.35, confirming an extreme specialisation in this product. Greece (RSCA 0.55, RCA 3.48) is the only other EU country with a meaningful comparative advantage.

3. The 2022 price shock and its uneven impact across partners

Global commodity inflation triggered the largest price shock in a decade

The supply-shock detection identifies 2022 as the epicentre of the most significant price dislocation in the decade. Export prices to the United States jumped by 46.7% in a single year, registering an abnormality score of 380.4 — by far the largest shock detected. Given that the US is the EU's top destination by value (30% share in that year), this single shock had an outsized effect on aggregate export revenues. Import price shocks from Serbia (+42.6%, abnormality 15.1) and export price shocks to Japan (+36.0%, abnormality 13.3) were also detected in the same year.

This 2022 spike corresponds to the global durum wheat crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted grain markets and pushed input costs to historic highs. Italy, as the EU's dominant producer and exporter, transmitted these cost increases through to export prices.

Trade volatility varies sharply by partner

Volatility analysis (measured by the coefficient of variation of trade values) reveals markedly different stability profiles:

Export partners — lowest volatility (stable demand)

Export partners — highest volatility (erratic demand)

Import partners — highest volatility (unstable supply)

The low volatility of exports to the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and Israel reflects mature, high-income consumer markets with steady demand for premium European pasta. By contrast, the import side shows highly erratic supply patterns from newer or smaller origin countries — particularly Tunisia and Viet Nam — whose trade flows are still structurally unsettled.

EU's growing export reliance did not increase vulnerability

Despite rising trade intensity (from 24.5% to 28.5%), the EU's net exporter position actually strengthened slightly: net import reliance moved from −29.4% to −33.6%. The growing share of production reaching non-EU markets signals healthy international competitiveness, not dependency. The key vulnerability risk lies not in imports — which remain negligible — but rather in input costs: a durum wheat price shock directly affects the EU's own producers, as the 2022 episode demonstrated.

Conclusion

The EU's trade in durum wheat pasta (CN 19021910) over 2015–2025 is a story of strong, sustained export growth underpinned by Italy's overwhelming dominance and a diversifying set of high-value destination markets. Export values nearly doubled, driven by both volume expansion (+41%) and rising unit prices (+30%). The United States emerged as the single most important growth market, overtaking the United Kingdom in value terms, while Canada and Israel also showed robust gains. The 2022 global commodity crisis left a clear imprint on the data, with the sharpest export price shock recorded in EU-US trade — a reminder that the EU's pasta export competitiveness is tightly linked to upstream durum wheat costs. Import flows, though growing faster in percentage terms, remain structurally marginal and pose no significant supply-side risk. Going forward, the key factors to watch are durum wheat price trends, the continued evolution of North American demand, and whether any EU member state beyond Italy and Greece can build a meaningful comparative advantage in this product category.