Packaging machines still show growth

Feb 20, 2019

Tags

With a turnover of 2018 close to 7.7 billion euros, the industrial sector belonging to Ucima (Union of Italian Manufacturers of Automatic Packaging and Wrapping Machines) confirms its international leadership.

The high propensity to export (close to 80%) being confirmed, the evolution of Italian packaging machine manufacturers does not show signs of abating. Bolstered by a strong world leadership - gained thanks to the technological/qualitative level of the proposed solutions, flexible and customized, as well as to the efficiency of a worldwide after-sales service - today the sector counts about 200-250 companies of industrial dimensions, to which some 350 production units with handicraft characteristics can be added. According to the pre-final balance data prepared by the Ucima Study Center, also in 2018 the turnover of the sector grew by a further 6.8 percentage points compared to the previous year, reaching almost 7.7 billion euros: a significant achievement, also thanks to the satisfactory results achieved on the domestic market.

Foreign market. In the twelve months of 2018, sales abroad exceeded 6 billion euros, an increase of 6.6% over the previous year.According to the disaggregated data available in December 2018 (relating to the first eight months of the year), the area where Italian manufacturers registered the best performance is North America, which grew by + 27.2%: the United States is confirmed as the first market for Made-in-Italy technologies and features a record growth of +35.4%.In second place we find Africa and Australia (+15.3%), followed by the European Union (+9.6%) and South America (+2.5%). On the other hand, exports to non-EU countries (-5.8%) and to Asia (-2.4%) were down.With regard to the performance of individual countries, France follows on from the US with an increase of +3.1%, followed by Germany (+1.5%).

Internal market. The good performance of Italy continued into 2018, which generated revenues of 1.6 billion euro (+7.5%). As stated by the President of Ucima, Enrico Aureli «the result is certainly due in part to the Industry plan 4.0, which has favored the adoption of the most innovative technologies proposed by our companies by Italian customers, but also by the recovery of the domestic market». At the time of writing, however, there is still concern for the economic and social policies expressed by the current government and which drives Aureli to speak of «the lack of attention shown in this regard towards the world of production, with the risk of marginalizing Italy on the European scene».
As regards the forecasts for the performance of the sector in 2019, the president of Ucima declared himself to be moderately optimistic, although he noted «a slight slowdown in growth: according to the data processed by our Research Center, the orders should in fact grow at a more modest pace, between 1 and 1.5%».