Two thousand companies, five thousand employees for a thriving sector: the production of sweets, particularly active during the Easter holidays. But there is a problem: qualified workers are not found. Of the 1,250 new hires expected among pastry chefs, ice cream makers, canners, bakers and pasta makers for 2025, 430 are unavailable, 34.4%. This is revealed by an analysis by Confartigianato Imprese Sardegna.
Despite this, traditional Easter sweets and pastries, even in Sardinia, are holding up to the uncertainty of domestic consumption, international crises and the increase in raw materials, confirming their role as protagonists of excellent holiday purchases. Both the production and sale of chocolate eggs and glazed doves, but also of Casadinas, Ricottine, Tiricche or tiliccas and Pardulas and Pastissus, not to mention the rest of the enormous variety of other Sardinian delicacies, show signs of resilience with the prices of fresh pastries maintaining a moderate evolution.
According to the report “Pastry shops and the confectionery sector: total and artisanal enterprises in Sardinia”, produced by the Press Office of Confartigianato Imprese Sardegna, based on UnionCamere-Infocamere data, there are 1,842 confectionery enterprises on the island, of which 1,326 are artisanal, 72.8%, which employ over 5,000 people in addition to all related industries. In addition to these, another 500 or so are involved in production or services related to Easter, such as florists, event organizers, box and packaging producers, but also home-delivered food and beverage distributors and chefs.
The confectionery sector includes 1,240 businesses, of which 921 are artisanal (74.3%) while the pastry businesses are 602, of which 405 are artisanal (67.3%). The confectionery and artisan pastry sector represents 3.9% of the entire Sardinian artisan sector.
Among the provinces, in Cagliari there are 690 active businesses of which 484 are artisan, 70.1%, in Nuoro-Ogliastra there are 464 businesses of which 355 are artisan, 76.5%, in Oristano 163 of which 110 are artisan, 67.5%, in Sassari-Gallura 525 of which 377 are artisan, 71.8%.
But "more and more businesses continue to find themselves in difficulty due to the lack of specialized personnel, especially during peak consumption periods," says Giacomo Meloni, president of Confartigianato Imprese Sardegna, "the danger for artisans is that faced with this shortage of manpower, they will start to resort to solutions such as semi-finished products or, worse, ready-made frozen products, in order to ensure production continuity. It is a "shortcut", or rather a serious risk that artisan confectionery professionals are trying with determination to avoid."
(Online Union)
