WOODWORKING TECHNOLOGIES, ORDERS FOURTH QUARTER, +3.7%

The fourth quarter 2020 brought some optimism to an economic trend that has been really complicated due to the global sanitary emergency. Woodworking and furniture industry technology in the October-December period of last year recorded 3.7 percent growth in orders compared to the same period of 2019. Encouraging signals came from the domestic market, with a 7.3 percent increase, stronger than the trend recorded by orders from international customers (plus 3 percent).

“There is no doubt that the final weeks of 2020 showed that the industry can face the current challenges, reaffirming its vocation to export and keeping a focus on the Italian market, which remains one of the most important and demanding on a global scale”, said Luigi De Vito, president of Acimall, the Confindustria member association representing Italian manufacturers. “Although the first weeks of this year are still showing an encouraging trend across the entire supply chain, we must be cautious and wait for the next quarters before we can say that the market is recovering. Significant support in this direction will certainly come from the Industry 4.0 transition plan and the extension of incentives to purchase new technology, deployed by the Italian government for the next two years”.

The quarterly survey by the Studies Office of Acimall on a statistic sample of companies indicates that the orders book is equal to 3.2 months (versus 3.1 in the previous quarter), with a price increase by 1.2 percent since the beginning of 2020. Revenues increased by 17.2 percent compared to Q4 2019.