It is preparing to close a further year in growth for the Italian industry of packaging machine manufacturers. According to the pre-final data of the Centro Studi di Ucima (Italian Manufacturers of Automatic Machines for packaging and packaging), the sector turnover is expected to reach 7.045 billion euros at the end of the year, up 6.7% over to 2016.
"We expected something more, I admit: on the one hand, our sector has returned to pre-crisis levels within a couple of years and is already very far ahead of investments 4.0 and therefore today is less responsive to incentives; downstream it serves very diversified customers, mainly food and pharma, and this dampens the peaks of the conjunctures and is increasingly oriented towards exports, because the demand for packaging moves to countries where wealth and consumption grow" is Luciano Sottile's explanation, vice-president of Ucima, representing the 600 Italian industrialists in packaging who are claiming world leadership to Germany.
If the preliminary results are in line with that of the last few years in terms of volumes, the manufacturers' order books are as full as ever in the last decade - the Ucima study center specifies - with an average of 7 months of assured production, but there is also who has already 12 months covered.
In detail, the area where the best performances are recorded is extra-EU Europe: + 14.6%, with the Russian Federation growing by 25%, while Turkey decreases by two percentage points. It follows Central-South America (+ 17.7%), with Mexico up by + 33.6% and Brazil which reverses the trend by registering a + 17%.
North America is in third place with a + 12.1%. The United States, with over 300 million euros and + 6.2%, is confirmed as the first market for Italian technologies.
The performance of the European Union is also excellent (+ 9.5%), with France and Germany growing respectively by + 7.8% and + 5.8%, confirming the first area of export in value. Asia and the Middle East, the second destination of Made in Italy technologies, grew by 3.9%, with China and India both increasing by more than 25%.
Also Italy records for the second consecutive year a record-breaking performance. After the + 9.8% recorded at the end of 2016, this year it should close with a further 8.2%, to 1.4 billion euros.
"It is certainly partly thanks to the Industry plan 4.0 which has favored the adoption of the most innovative technologies proposed by our companies by Italian customers - states the President of Ucima, Enrico Aureli- but also of the recovery of the market".
According to the forecast data of the Centro Studi Ucima, in fact, Italy should grow by + 4% on an annual average until 2019. "As for 2018 - Aureli continues - our Study Center foresees a further strengthening of our international penetration with an average growth of + 5%.
Ucima, Union of Italian Manufacturers of Automatic Machines for Packaging and Packaging, brings together over 100 companies in the sector distributed throughout the national territory. In addition to disseminating and analyzing strictly economic data, it represents a privileged point of observation on the sector, which highlights the most critical elements raised by companies with great precision.
Daniele Toni