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Home > GERMANY > Akzente
Machine tools: Italian products back in the running
Rome - (Ign) - Two difficult years, marked by an economic slump in Europe and a disadvantageous Euro/ Dollar exchange rate. Then, in late 2003, we saw the first slight signs of recovery, confirmed in the first half of 2004, and becoming a solid trend later in the year and in early 2005. Once over the slump, the international, and in particular Italian, machine tool industry (www.ucimu.it) started once more to run smoothly, confirming previous positive trends.
This is an important sign, for at least two reasons. First of all, because the trend in the machine tools sector is an excellent indicator of the interest of industry as a whole in new investments. This indicator measures business optimism, the growth objectives considered achievable, and the willingness to mobilise economic resources by increasing risk capital. And the fact that on an international, European and domestic level the production of machine tools is clearly recovering marks an evident turnaround of the depressing trend which characterised 2002 and 2003. The second reason is related to the specific nature of this sector within the framework of Italian industry: with € 4 billion annual turnover and over 35,000 jobs, the Italian machine tools industry is in fact one of the most important in the world, together with that of Germany, Japan, the United States and Taiwan. It's major role is due both to its absolute size and the percentage of products exported, which at present account for over 50% of the overall turnover. But, above all, it is due to the type and quality of Italian products, whether destined for the domestic or international market.
These are machine tools which in many cases are almost unique in the international commercial panorama, constantly of extremely high technological quality, extreme working precision and innovative functional capacity, above all in centres for the cutting and shaping of metals. It is probably in these characteristics that the strength of this production sector is to be found, able to respond to the constantly changing needs of the manufacturing industry in general and that of mechanical processing in particular. Italian products have obtained growing market shares in specific niches, such as those of machinery for metal wire production, numerically controlled turning centres, apparatus for the refacing of metal surfaces, automatic arms to simplify production processes, and robotic soldering systems.
Italian brands in the sector basically hold a position of supremacy in specific, extremely specialised segments, making many of them international benchmarks. This fully justifies the trend of Italian exports in the sector, which are naturally aimed above all at Europe (around 50% of the total, headed by Germany, France and Spain) and North America (with the United States leading), but also at many important emerging economies. A case in point is Russia, which in 2004 accounted for only 3.3% of Italian machine tool exports, but with a growth rate of almost 100% on the previous year. Nor should we forget Asia and the Far East, which now represent the second-largest export market for Italian machine tools, with particular growth in China (up 15% in one year) and Japan (up 90%).
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