Celso Paganini draws upon a century-old family tradition and more than 25 years of professional experience in the production and distribution of fresh produce to provide strategic direction for BellaVita, a new brand of fine Mediterranean fruits and vegetables. While the brand is new, the parent company, Paganini Foods, LLC, has been successfully selling fruits and vegetables from Italy in the United States for the past year, and the Paganini family has been involved with exporting fruits and vegetables from Italy to Europe for nearly 100 years.


Growing up in the fresh produce business, as a child C.Paganini accompanied his father to their family’s apple and pear orchards in North Italy and to the terminal markets in Milan, and as a young man he learned the business from the bottom up starting with loading and unloading trucks by hand.

In 1981, after his father passed away, C.Paganini became co-owner of his family’s business, Venzi & Paganini AG, which was one of the largest Swiss-Italian importer and distributor of fruits and vegetables for the European market. While C.Paganini worked his way up the corporate ladder at Venzi & Paganini, he spearheaded several major campaigns as an executive within the company. Major projects included increasing the peaches and nectarines business from 150 to 300 trucks in four years, developing the grape business from 30 to 200 in trucks in four years and launching a major watermelon campaign that loaded more than 100 tons of melons per day in the Milan facility.

Also, C.Paganini was very involved in assuring the quality of the fruits and vegetables – visiting supplier after supplier to obtain the ‘best of the best’ produce.

It is C.Paganini’s strong foundation in the family business, combined with an entrepreneurial spirit and genuine passion for high-quality produce, which has inspired him to begin Paganini Foods in 2002.

C.Paganini graduated from St. Gallen in Switzerland with a lic.oec.HSG, which is the equivalent to a graduate degree in business in the United States. While in school, C.Paganini continued working part-time at Venzi & Paganini and pursued a Swiss military career during school holidays. He worked his way up through the ranks to a major and will become a lieutenant-colonel January 1, 2004. He also holds a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Columbia University in New York City.