Something is green in the state of Denmark. The country, which has one of the world’s highest GDPs, has long been a promoter of sustainability, and is a pioneer in renewable energy and the use of natural resources. Some twenty years ago, this approach was embraced also by the world of food, which in a matter of years rose up out of relative obscurity as New Nordic Cuisine became an international concept. It was the creation of the founders of Noma, Claus Meyer and René Redzepi, and was based on the use and recovery of local ingredients, foraging, sustainability and the influence of the genius loci. Un The approach soon spread all around the world, from Bolivia to Albania, through training, the Nordic Food Lab, the MAD Symposium meetings, and the pop-ups of the non-profit MAD organisation. Today, the country boasts 25 restaurants that together have received a total of 33 Michelin stars, and a food industry which in 2018 involved 6,746 restaurants with a turnover of 61.3 million euros and a workforce of 47,300.

With a daily consumption per person of 1.46 cups, Denmark now ranks among the world’s top ten coffee-drinking nations, and has a strong specialty coffee community. The volume of sales in the food service sector has seen constant growth and is expected to be worth 6,829 million dollars in 2021, with an annual growth rate of 8.1%. Coffee culture, which is very much bound up with the concept of hygge, that sense of wellbeing that comes from spending time in a cosily convivial place with friends, or even alone with a good book, is developing all the time, with locales open for business for all the day’s occasions.

The focus is on offering original and unique experiences. The Swedish Espresso House, for example, opened a coffee shop in a bank in Aarhus in 2019, and in Copenhagen there are cafés in bookstores (Paludan Bog & Café) and vinyl record shops (Sort Kaffe & Vinyl), while others offer the cosy comforts of the home environment (Living Room).

So this is a vibrant, fast-developing sector. That much is clear from the forecasts for imports. In 2019 espresso-making machines recorded imports totalling 59 million euros, and by 2023 it is expected that imports will increase by an average of +8.3% annually. From Italy, which ranks fifth among countries that trade on the Danish market, with 1.6 million euros exported in 2019, it is expected that between 2020 and 2023 total exports to the country will double (with a CAGR of approximately +20%). As for packaged products (109 million euros in 2019 and 150.9 million euros of apparent consumption), an average annual increase of 6% by value is forecast for 2023. Here, Italy ranks sixth among countries that trade in this product with Denmark: 3.1 million euros of goods were exported in 2019, and that figure should increase by 1.1 million euros (with a CAGR of +8.2%).

Things are also “hotting up”, as it were, on the gelato market. By 2023 packaged gelato imports should rise by an annual average (by value) of 7.6%. Italy, which ranks sixth among the main countries from which Denmark imports, with exports totalling 5 million euros in 2019, looks set to achieve a CAGR of +3.2% over the 2020-2023 period. Chilled display cabinets (imports totalling 52.2 million euros in 2019) are expected to increase by an annual average (by value) of 4.5% for Italy, the second largest country with which Denmark trades, second only to China, which totalled 7 million euros in 2019, an export figure that should remain more or less unchanged.