The Ipack-Ima Observatory speaks of widespread optimism

The Italian industrial processing and packaging industry is in good health, generating an annual turnover of over 44 billion euros, with future prospects that open up to interesting business opportunities, thanks also to the high propensity to export. Among the pitfalls perceived by companies, the competitive and macroeconomic scenario, commodity prices, labour costs and taxation. This is the picture of the segment, as it emerges from the Ipack-Ima  Observatory*.

Examining the figures and the forecasts, the Italian processing and packaging industry confirms growth in the second half of 2016 of between 0% and 5% for the majority of production types and business communities.
The results significantly affected the sentiment expressed by entrepreneurs for the current semester. And if exports, in particular, proved to be the driving force behind sales, in the first six months of 2017 higher growth rates are expected on the Italian domestic market, directly or indirectly aided by the  depreciation and amortization measures for instrumental goods implemented by the Italian Government.

Global evaluation of opinions
Breaking down performance into types of machines and materials produced by the companies, processing machines have registered a turnover equally positive on the Italian domestic market and abroad, employment figures also good. In both semesters, the majority of companies in this sub-sector are in a range of growth going from 0 to 5%.

The instrumental goods sector, comprising packaging machine builders, is also seen to be on the up, but at slightly lower rates. Many  companies estimate the decline in exports and employment, though in the two semesters, companies that declare a growth in business prevail (from 62% to 75%). Consistent with what has been observed in the packaging machinery sector, the forecasts for the current half-year are also expected to cool down among of packaging material manufacturers, especially with regard to national sales and employment.

Conversely, forecasts are improving on the export front. Extremely positive, however, are the opinions of the companies in the components sector, a segment in which the percentage share of negative opinions does not exceed 5%.

The perceived risks
The survey also carried out a careful identification of the risks perceived by the sample of operators regarding the profitability of their business. Although with varying intensity depending on the different production segments, the main threats are the increasingly aggressive competitive climate (20% of respondents), the macroeconomic factors attributable to some sales (12%), the rise in commodity and energy prices (one out of four respondents), labour costs (13%) and adverse changes in the tax regime (12%). The threats that directly affect the financial management of businesses, such as access to credit and the related cost are seen to have a lesser weight as they are only raised in replies of less than 4% of respondents.