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Home > USA > Focus On
Look to Italy for your tractors
Rome - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - We could say that it was a necessity before it was an opportunity. Italian farming needed machines to replace traditional labour, which had fled from the fields towards the world of building and industry. This is what happened in Italy, immediately after the Second World War, when the sudden change in the country's political and economic conditions allowed an industry which up until then had been extremely weak to develop at a rate which has seen few equals. A few million farming workers changed jobs and often also their homes, to move into industry. And in the fields, machinery and tractors were needed. A few companies who at the time were already working in the sector managed to respond to this growing demand. Indicative of this is the fact that in 1945 there were 52,000 tractors in Italy; in 2000 they had become 1,750,000.
But from the need to respond to a growing demand for farming machinery to becoming the leading European constructor and the second-largest in the world, was not an easy step. Entrepreneurial skill was also required, the ability to follow the changing demand, the will to take on the competitors and reach out to markets the world over. Today, the Italian farming machinery industry and, above all that of tractors, is large enough to be a major player on the world stage (www.unacoma.it). In fact, the major player, if we consider that the second-largest American producer in the sector, the CNH group, is controlled by Fiat, which, in turn is also the leading producer in a large number of other countries outside Italy.
The overall Italian production of farming machinery is now worth almost € 7 billion per year, over half of which is realised on foreign markets, compared to imports of less than € 900 million. The expansion began in the 1960s, thanks to continuous technological evolution, to the ability to respond to changing demands, and to the positive response to the need to move on from small companies and build stronger industrial groups. This without however losing sight of the specific nature of the sector which has to offer the market an extremely wide range of products: from heavy machinery (where Italian industry is second in the world only to America), to technologically more advanced agricultural systems with a growing degree of automation; from the special machinery and accessories dedicated to particular farming activities, to systems for working the land in all types of terrain. Today, the machines which bear the names of Fiat (today CNH Italia), Carraro, Goldoni, Landini, Same and Valpadana are known the world over and contribute to the image of Italian industry just as much as the great names of fashion, which are only apparently more widely known.
These are the principal markets for Italian industry in the sector: Europe accounts for 56%; Eastern Europe 48%; United States for 10%, Africa and Asia 48% each. Is this, then, above all a continental market? Only apparently. Apart from the Italian presence in the US through CNH, the second-largest producer the world after John Deer, Italian products in the sector have in fact managed to make inroads in many countries by setting up local industries or joint ventures. This production system on a global scale, integrated on an international level, has also made it possible for Italian companies to have success on distant markets, such as Russia, the whole of Latin America and today also India and China.
And the prospects for the coming years are full of positive and promising. The European market, in fact, does not show signs of offering significant growth, but Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America still seem to offer years of positive growth, to which Italian companies will surely know how to respond.
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