Wholesale Market Infrastructure Modernization in Northern Italian Cities

Between 2024 and 2026, several northern Italian agri-food wholesale market facilities received significant capital investment through Italy's PNRR (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza) framework. The projects span three cities — Treviso, Genoa, and Milan — and share common threads: digital logistics upgrades, cold-chain infrastructure improvements, renewable energy installations, and the operational shift toward 24-hour or extended-hours operation. This account draws on publicly released project documentation from the facilities themselves.

The PNRR as an Infrastructure Investment Framework

Italy's PNRR, financed through the EU's NextGenerationEU mechanism, allocated funds across a range of economic sectors including agri-food logistics. Wholesale market facilities qualified for PNRR investment under the broader mission of reducing food waste, improving food supply chain resilience, and modernizing logistics infrastructure as part of Italy's post-pandemic economic recovery plan. The three projects described here are among the most documented examples of how these funds reached the wholesale market sector in northern Italy.

PNRR grants to market facilities are typically structured as partial funding — the market operator or owning municipality provides co-investment alongside the grant. The ratios vary by project; in the Genoa case, the PNRR grant covers approximately €10 million of a total €14 million investment.

Treviso Produce Market: A 65-Year-Old Facility Into a 24-Hour Hub

The Treviso ortofrutticolo (produce market) is one of the older facilities in the Veneto region's wholesale market network, with infrastructure dating back roughly 65 years. A modernization project budgeted at approximately €7 million was approved with a planned completion date of June 2026. The project scope includes four major components:

• City logistics platform: A dedicated temperature-controlled distribution zone for last-mile urban delivery. This element addresses the growing demand from food service and e-commerce operators for smaller, more frequent deliveries into Treviso's historic centre, where vehicle access restrictions apply during daytime hours.
• Long-range logistics platform: Extended loading and consolidation infrastructure for regional and inter-regional shipments, supporting the role Treviso plays in distributing Veneto's agricultural output — including Radicchio di Treviso IGP and local soft fruit — to buyers in other regions.
• Photovoltaic system: Panels sized to generate approximately 60% of the facility's energy needs, reducing dependence on grid power and lowering operating costs. The system is one of the larger photovoltaic installations in the Veneto wholesale market network.
• Food waste reduction measures: Improved traceability through digital labelling and temperature-controlled storage areas designed to reduce spoilage during extended holding periods. The digital traceability system links inbound product to outbound delivery records, creating an audit trail for produce quality across the cold chain.

The 24-hour operational model being introduced at Treviso reflects a structural shift in how wholesale markets relate to urban food logistics. Traditional market hours — concentrated in the early morning — create bottlenecks in urban distribution when large volumes of goods attempt to enter city centres simultaneously. Extending operations across the full day allows staggered delivery schedules, which reduces vehicle congestion and aligns better with the schedules of food service and hospitality buyers.

Genoa Agri-Food Center: Digital Systems and Energy Efficiency

The Centro Agroalimentare of Genoa received €10 million in PNRR grant funding within a total investment package of €14 million. The project, with a completion target of mid-2026, covers three primary areas: digitalization of logistics systems, energy efficiency infrastructure, and cold-chain upgrades.

The digital component involves installing real-time operational monitoring systems across the facility's logistics areas. These systems track goods movement from intake to dispatch, providing market operators and facility managers with live data on product location, volume, and temperature status throughout the handling process. For a facility like Genoa's — which sits at a critical junction in the distribution chain between producers in Liguria, Piedmont, and the Po Valley, and buyers along the Ligurian Riviera and the Port of Genoa — operational visibility of this kind reduces handling errors and speeds up load preparation.

Energy efficiency measures account for a significant portion of the investment. A 1.5 MW photovoltaic system is included in the project, alongside new climate control systems for cold storage and logistics areas. The projected energy saving is 30% compared to current consumption — a figure driven primarily by replacing older refrigeration compressors and improving the thermal insulation of cold rooms. At a facility scale, a 30% reduction in energy consumption represents a material change to operating costs given the continuous electricity demand of refrigerated infrastructure.

The cold-chain upgrades at Genoa are described in the project documentation as improvements to existing infrastructure rather than new construction. This is consistent with the general pattern in Italian wholesale market PNRR projects: most facilities have functioning cold chain installations from earlier decades that require modernisation rather than replacement.

Milan Ortomercato: The Foody 2025 Programme

Milan's wholesale produce market — known as Ortomercato and administered through the Foody consortium — is on a different scale from Treviso and Genoa. The Foody 2025 investment programme carries a total budget of approximately €700 million, making it one of the largest single investment programmes in European wholesale market infrastructure in recent years. Completion of the current phase was targeted for the end of 2025, with continued works extending into 2026.

The scale of the investment reflects Milan's position in Italy's food distribution hierarchy. The Ortomercato serves the Milan metropolitan area — Italy's largest urban consumption market — as well as buyers across Lombardy and into neighbouring regions. The facility's operators have publicly stated the ambition to make it the most modern food hub in Europe, a claim grounded in the scope of the project rather than marketing positioning.

Key components of the Foody 2025 programme include:

• New fruit and vegetable pavilions: 47,000 m² of covered trading floor space, replacing older open-air or semi-covered sections of the market. The new pavilions incorporate modern loading dock configurations and temperature management systems in trading areas.
• Centralised digital logistics: A unified logistics management system across the facility, connecting inbound goods tracking, operator position management, and outbound distribution coordination. The system is designed to integrate with buyers' own procurement systems, enabling pre-ordering and scheduled collection rather than purely on-site spot purchasing.
• Renewable energy: An 11.3 MW thermal renewable energy installation, the largest energy component of the project. This covers a substantial share of the facility's heating and cooling load, which at Ortomercato scale involves refrigerated warehousing, cold rooms across multiple pavilions, and climate control for administrative areas.
• Food safety infrastructure: Updated cold chain handling areas and product testing facilities aligned with current EU food safety regulations, including requirements under the Farm to Fork strategy.

Common Patterns Across the Three Projects

Several structural patterns appear across the Treviso, Genoa, and Milan modernization projects, and are likely to recur in other PNRR-funded Italian market upgrades:

• Digital logistics systems are a priority investment in all three cases — the shift from paper-based or manual tracking to real-time digital systems is the single most common upgrade across PNRR market projects.
• Photovoltaic and renewable energy installations are present at all three facilities, reflecting both the energy intensity of cold chain operations and the availability of PNRR funding categories specifically supporting energy transition.
• Cold chain improvements are framed as upgrades to existing infrastructure rather than new installation — most northern Italian wholesale markets have some cold chain capacity, but ageing refrigeration equipment and inadequate insulation reduce its efficiency.
• Extended operating hours — moving toward 24-hour or multi-shift operation — appear in project documentation as a goal associated with urban logistics integration, particularly for facilities near restricted traffic zones.

Legislative Context

The modernization of Italy's wholesale market network also has a legislative dimension. A proposed reform to the regulatory framework governing wholesale markets — reported in Il Sole 24 Ore — would update the rules under which wholesale market operators function, potentially affecting how markets are classified, governed, and eligible for public investment. The details of this legislative proposal were not finalized as of mid-2025; its progress is relevant for market operators and municipalities planning infrastructure investment beyond the current PNRR cycle.