The Italian tile industry closes 2015 with growth in turnover to 5.1 billion euros

The Italian ceramic tile industry has reported a positive 2015 with a turnover of 5.1 billion euros, 4.1% up on the previous year. Once again this strong result was driven by exports, which grew by 5.1% to 4.3 billion euros, 84.4% of total turnover. By contrast, domestic sales remained virtually unchanged at 799 million euros (-0.6%).

The figures unveiled by Confindustria Ceramica during its Annual Meeting showed growth in Italian tile output to almost 395 million sq.m (+3.4%), produced by 150 companies.

Total sales by volume reached 397 million sq.m (+0.6%), consisting of 80.3 million sq.m of domestic sales (almost unchanged with respect to the 80.8 million sq.m of 2014) and 316.6 million sq.m of exports (+0.9%).

The analysis of the trends in the various destination markets reveals that exports held strong in Western Europe, the main export market for Italian tiles (+1.9% in 2015 following the previous year’s 5.3% growth on the back of two years of contraction). The industry also marked up strong performances in the Far East (+14.3%), the NAFTA region (+5.9%), the Gulf states and the Balkans (both +5%). This contrasted with falling sales in Central and Eastern Europe (-17.3%), North Africa and the Middle East (-8.6%) and Latin America (-4.8%).

Another significant figure to emerge from the statistical survey regards investments. In 2015 the sector’s companies invested 351.3 million euros (up 22.7% on 2014 following a 27% increase over the previous year), equivalent to 6.9% of annual turnover. This was the highest figure since the year 2000.

Internationalisation of production

The results achieved by ceramic factories located in Italy were complemented by those of the 16 companies operating abroad but controlled by 9 Italian groups. In 2015, the non-Italian production facilities, located mainly in the United States and Europe, produced 82.3 million sq.m (+6.6%) and generated a total turnover of 792.2 million euros (+9.8%), including 58.4% from operations in Europe and the rest from sales in North America.

Italian-owned companies located abroad generated 78.7% of their turnover from sales in the same market as the factory.