Parmigiano and Grana Padano: two cheeses, two bets

In 2025 Parmigiano Reggiano made 4.19¹ million wheels and turned over €3.96² billion at retail, half of its sales abroad, while Grana Padano made 6,053,690³ wheels, the largest volume of any Italian cheese DOP, and exported about 45% of them.

4.19 million wheels, by province

Parmigiano Reggiano production reached 4.19¹ million wheels in 2025, up 2.7% on 2024, which comes to about 168,000¹ tonnes. The consortium also splits the total by province, and the split is uneven.

Parma made 1,391,000¹ wheels, Reggio Emilia 1,242,000¹, Modena 918,000¹, Mantova 524,000¹ and Bologna 115,000¹. The two provinces in the name account for well over half of the output, and Bologna, the regional capital, is a small producer.

€3.96 billion, half of it sold abroad

The consortium puts Parmigiano Reggiano's retail turnover at €3.96² billion for 2025, with exports at 50.5%² of sales, or 74,980² tonnes. More than one euro in two spent on this cheese is now spent outside Italy.

That turnover is a consumer price figure, measured at the till, not what the dairies are paid. Half of that value depends on buyers outside Italy.

Grana Padano: more wheels, less abroad

Grana Padano made 6,053,690³ wheels in 2025, up 7.4% on 2024, about 236,180³ tonnes, and it is the Italian cheese DOP with the largest volume. The consortium counts 134³ dairies, 121³ producing companies and 3,376³ farms delivering milk.

About 2.76⁴ million of those wheels were exported, roughly 45% of production. Some press reports put the export share above 50%, because they calculate it on wheels that received the brand mark rather than on everything produced, which is a good reason to check the base of any percentage you read.

Two strategies, one method warning

Parmigiano makes 4.19¹ million wheels to Grana's 6,053,690³, and it leans harder on value and on foreign buyers. Grana Padano makes roughly three wheels for every two of Parmigiano and keeps a larger share at home.

The two export shares are not measured the same way, though. Parmigiano's 50.5%² is a share of sales, Grana's 45% is a share of wheels produced. Put side by side they suggest a gap, but the honest comparison is between the direction of the two businesses, not between the decimals.

Both are among the 174⁵ food DOPs Italy had registered in the EU in September 2026, out of 330⁵ food products counting 156⁵ IGPs.

The collateral story, and what we can't confirm

The consortium figures on this page do not mention cheese held by banks as loan collateral, and we have no verified source for the practice as it stands today. The story is repeated often: dairies pledge ageing wheels to a bank and borrow against them while the cheese matures.

We haven't confirmed which banks still do it, on what terms, or how many wheels they hold. Rather than print a number found in a feature article, this page leaves the figure blank until it can be sourced. If a verified source turns up, the number will go here with its date.

What the consortium numbers do show is scale. Stock worth €3.96² billion a year at retail is the kind of asset a lender would look at, which is why the story sounds plausible even without a source.

At the cheese counter

The name on the rind is the DOP, and both consortia publish their own production data, each from a single primary source. The figures above are theirs, for 2025, with no independent audit behind them that we could open. Check the year as well: every figure on this page is for 2025.

The individual cheeses are at Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano, the region at food in Emilia-Romagna, and the EU system at DOP and IGP.

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