Exports fuel recovery of the Italian ceramic industry

The Italian ceramic industry is currently experiencing a recovery, with positive growth in 2010 over the previous year due to a rise in exports (+2.7%).

The preliminary year-end export growth figures are lower than the previously reported value for the period to the end of September, which indicated 5.65% growth due to strong performance in Asia, the United States, France, Germany and Russia. This is because the last quarter of the year was the most difficult due to the adverse climatic conditions which penalised exports. As of 30 September 2010, the EU countries where Italian companies had generated their largest turnovers were Germany (up 5% to 26.4 million square metres of tiles, corresponding to a value of 336.3 million euro) and France (40.4 million sq.m to a total value of 508 million euro). Particularly significant increases were reported in Finland (up 7.64% to 2.3 million sq.m, corresponding to 27 million euro) and Sweden (up 8.31% to 3.2 million sq.m, or a turnover of 42 million euro).

Amongst non-EU countries, the best results were achieved in Russia (up 9.78% to 2.6 million sq.m or 61.9 million euro) and Switzerland (up 7.71% to 5.7 million sq.m or 86 million euro). Positive growth was also reported in the United States (+14.61%), where the industry sold 20.7 million sq.m to a total of USD 267.9 million. The Italian tile industry also exported 22.1 million sq.m of tiles to the Asian market, corresponding to a value of 267.2 million euro (+25.92%).