Quality pays off for Italian sanitaryware

In good news for the Italian ceramic sanitaryware industry, the recovery in output that began in 2016 (+8.5%) continued through 2017 with further 4.5% growth. The volumes produced last year by the 33 companies in the sector (including 30 operating in the Civita Castellana cluster in the province of Viterbo) rose to 4.27 million pieces, generating a turnover of 353.3 million euros (6.1% up on 2016). Exports have also grown steadily in recent years, reaching 159 million euros in 2017, 45% of total sales. The volumes exported last year grew by 7.5% to more than 53,000 tonnes, most of which were sold in markets such as Germany, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the USA.

“The results of the last two years suggest that the market is returning to normal”, says Augusto Ciarrocchi, chairman of the board of Ceramica Flaminia, one of the most important Italian sanitaryware manufacturers, and as of June this year vice chairman of Confindustria Ceramica.

He continues: “A return to pre-crisis production levels is unimaginable, and we are also unlikely to go back to the average selling prices of a decade ago. Nonetheless, well-established companies that have pursued a product-oriented strategy during this period are now seeing a recovery in sales revenues”.

Quality and design have played an important role in overcoming the crisis but at the same time have helped deal with the increasingly fierce competition allowing Italian brands to compete in the higher-end segments of the market. This was also the strategy of Ceramica Flaminia, which closed 2017 with 9% turnover growth and aims to increase revenues and profitability further in the two-year period 2018-2019, gradually returning to the pre-crisis turnover level of 2008 (36 million euros).

Read the interview to Augusto Ciarrocchi published in Ceramic World Review 127/2018

Production process at Ceramica Flaminia