ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Anna Garbagna in Italy takes a look at the annual survey by Afidamp on product sales for 2022.

There is a climate of optimism for professional cleaning which is predicting a growing trend for the closure of the current year.

The companies interviewed for the annual survey of producers and distributors  commissioned by Afidamp to Cerved have confirmed the results for 2022.

The sales performance for 2022 has been positive for over half of producers. All sectors of the cleaning market have shown this important growth and for 2023 too, the trend should be true for almost 50 per cent of the companies.

The encouraging data is of particular importance especially from the perspective of the market from which they came, characterised by a particularly difficult situation caused by the increase of the price of energy and raw materials and the direction of inflation.

Undoubtedly the activities of raising awareness and spreading of information were important: marketing, exhibitions and customer initiatives were crucial for maintaining the relationship between companies and consumers. These activities obviously had a cost but companies were able to expertly execute them partly by reinvesting company profits, the loyalty of existing customers and the search for new clients. Not secondary were the expansion of the offer and the role of digital communications which are more and more crucial.

Going into detail, we can state that the overall market of the producers in the cleaning sector last year was estimated to be around €3.9 billion, with important growth in every sector. Afidamp members, representing over €2 billion turnover, recorded growth of 13 per cent.

Going into further detail, the producers of paper products recorded the highest growth (+19 per cent for a total of €763.8 million), followed by the machines sector (+13 per cent with €589.7 million) and equipment sector (+11 per cent with €78. 3 million).  Also on the up were accessories and spare parts for machines (+13 per cent), chemicals (+five per cent), fibres and cloths (+four per cent with €28.7 million).

While the most important figure for turnover was from the paper sector (+26 per cent), the producers of chemicals had the greatest significance in the internal market.

For 2023, research done on the top players associated with Afidamp has shown good forecasts (+ 20.6 per cent for machines, +33 per cent for paper, + 14,8 per cent for chemicals). The only negative forecast is for equipment/fibres and cloths (-0.3 per cent) which compensates with a
total growth of exports of 69 per cent.

The research - which also analysed the distributor sector composed of about 1,630 companies with an estimated global turnover of €2.65 billion - presented a market in which 20 per cent of companies invoiced over five million euros and  accounted for more than 60 per cent of the turnover of the sector. Here chemicals lead the market with a share of 43 per cent, followed by machines at 20 per cent and consumables 17 per cent. But the element that surely unites all sectors is confidence in the future and a positive view of what the trend will be in the next few months.