Reporting from Italy, Anna Garbagna looks at how the recession has affected the country's cleaning sector.
According to studies carried out by Afidamp FAB (the Italian association of manufacturers of machines, products and equipment for industrial cleaning) – the cleaning sector has never recorded such strong signals of recession either on foreign markets or in Italy.
From its beginnings in the 70s, the association has seen a constant increase in demand and turnover, enough to take Italian products to the leading edge in the international scene of industrial cleaning machines. In fact Italy is now considered to be among the leading manufacturers worldwide.
In the first half of 2008, data recorded was absolutely in line with the ‘history’ of the sector. The difference came in the second half when the first evidence of the economic stagnation started to emerge. This slowdown started to reverse the trend but overall growth for the year was still positive.
According to the market analysis carried out by Afidamp on companies representing over 85 per cent of the cleaning sector, the economic crisis fully showed itself during the first quarter of 2009, characterised by a strong drop in demand and consequently in production - as much as 25 per cent. Unfortunately, the forecast for the second period - still not finalised - is not very different and is tending towards estimations of - 20 per cent.
As in many other industrial sectors, it was necessary to strongly rely on Temporary Redundancy Payment. (Cassa Integrazione). If we want to analyse the complete figures, as Afidamp is doing in its research, the sector’s turnover represented by the cleaning part last year was €1,338,411,554, of which 49.2 per cent was achieved on the Italian market and €680,231,039 - 50.8 - per cent was from export.
The year 2008, taken as a whole, has seen an increase of three per cent compared to 2007 while still recording a clear drop in the positive trend which in 2007 was 15 per cent compared to the previous year. Items grouped under ‘accessories and machine spare parts’ were those to suffer the greatest drop, at six per cent (the previous year was as much as -10 per cent) and were followed by ‘indoor machines’ which fell from + 14 per cent in 2007 on 2006, down to -1.4 per cent in 2008 compared to 2007.
The total number of ‘indoor machines’ produced in 2008 was 1,174,240, of which 75.5 per cent were for export and 24.5 per cent were distributed in Italy. The second half of the year significantly affected the machines sector, mainly as far as foreign demand is concerned. The Italian market has recorded a slight increase in demand which however did not produce a corresponding increase in sales, because the demand was towards low-tech machines which did not compensate for the drop suffered by the more complex machines.
All sections of the market, even those remaining positive, have suffered, despite the slight increase in the second half of the year. Mild signs of recovery seem to be in sight for those markets in which only reliability and professionalism will be able to achieve steady growth. |
|
|
