Southern Europe
Italy: Record-breaking year for the Italian machine tool industry
| Editor: Steffen Donath
The year 2018 has been record-breaking for the Italian industry manufacturing machine tools, robots and automation systems, which registered double-digit increases for all economic indicators. The year 2019 will instead be characterised by a general stability.
Based on the ISTAT data processing by UCIMU, in the first eight months of the year (latest available survey), the main destination countries for the Made in Italy products of the sector were the following: Germany 246 million euro (+11.6%); China 237 million euro (+7.1%); United States 223 million euro (+9.5%); Poland 143 million euro (+49.8%) and France 135 million euro (-4.6%).
Thanks to these increases, Italy strengthened its role in the international scenario, where it stood out not only for the competence expressed by the industries of the sector, measured by the production and export data, but also for the dynamism of its demand, supported and stimulated by the incentive provisions for competitiveness, such as Super- and Hyper-Depreciation, included in the Industry/Enterprise 4.0 programmes.
Italian users’ propensity to invest in new technology and also in digital products, pushed Italian manufacturers to focus on the domestic market, as proven by the reduction of the export/production ratio, which changed from 55.6% in 2017 to 52.6% in 2018.
Experiencing a non-favourable general atmosphere, in 2019, however the Italian industry of the sector should confirm its 2018 performances, enjoying a positive trend with regard to deliveries in the foreign markets, expected to increase. A clear slowdown is shown by the domestic market, whose growth trend seems to have lost the momentum we were used to over the last few years.
This article was first published on www.etmm-online.com.
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