Tiles remain top client sector for Italian ceramic technology

With a total turnover of 1,121.3 million euro in 2010, the tile industry remained the most important client sector for the ceramic machinery producers, accounting for 80.4% of turnover. This represented an 18% increase over 2009 as the combined result of 22.7% growth in exports and 5% growth in the Italian domestic market. A turnover of 266.6 million euro was generated from sales in Italy and 854.6 million euro from exports.

Brick and tile producers remained the second most important client sector in terms of turnover (10% of the total) in spite of being the worst hit sector last year (down 25.9% to 139.3 million euro). The largest fall (-34.1%) was in the Italian market, while exports dropped by 23%.
Next came sanitaryware machinery with a turnover of 51.4 million euro, a 10% decrease (down 43.5% in Italy and up 9% in international markets).

The refractories industry suffered a much smaller fall than in 2009 due to strong growth in sales in Italy (+34.7%). In 2010 the value of total sales to this segment amounted to 31.9 million euro (-12.4%). Sales of various ceramic machinery suffered 13.6% losses, largely due to a drop in exports (-19.6%), whereas the tableware machinery sector achieved significant growth (+14.4%) to reach a turnover of 20.8 million euro.