Mixed results for the Italian ceramic tile industry in 2024

Total tile sales reached 376 million sqm in 2024, a 1.9% increase over 2023 largely driven by exports. Production continued its downward trend with a 2% contraction.

2024 was a mixed year for the Italian ceramic tile industry, marked by a slight increase in sales volumes but a further decline in production and revenues.

Preliminary figures compiled by Prometeia for Confindustria Ceramica and presented at the association’s traditional end-of-year press conference revealed that total sales volumes rose to 376 million sqm in 2024, a 1.9% increase compared to 2023. However, as Confindustria Ceramica Chairman Augusto Ciarrocchi noted, this slight growth has merely maintained sales at the already significantly reduced levels of 2023. When compared to pre-pandemic sales figures of 407 million sqm in 2019, the industry has seen a decline of approximately 7.5%.

At the close of 2024, domestic sales of Italian ceramic tiles reached nearly 85 million sqm (+0.3%), while exports rose to 291 million sqm (+2.4%). This growth was driven by a gradual recovery in North American and Asian markets, which helped offset greater challenges in Europe where the decline in residential construction investment had a particularly significant impact. According to the Prometeia-Confindustria Ceramica forecasting observatory, residential construction in Western Europe contracted by 3.5% in 2024, with Germany and France experiencing the most negative trends. In Italy, a further downturn is anticipated in 2025 as renovation incentives expire. In contrast, the outlook is brighter in the United States and the Gulf countries, where residential construction investments are estimated to have grown by 3.8% and 3.2% respectively in 2024.

The challenging scenario for the Italian tile industry is confirmed by two additional negative figures. Total tile production is estimated to have declined by 2% compared to 2023, falling to approximately 366 million sqm, while the sector’s total turnover decreased by an expected 5% year-on-year to below €6 billion, primarily due to the reduction in sales prices.

Industry challenges on EU agendas

Commenting on the latest figures for the ceramic industry, Confindustria Ceramica Chairman Augusto Ciarrocchi noted a number of key challenges facing the sector – decarbonisation, energy and unfair competition – all of which are strongly dependent on decisions that will be taken at the European Union level. “The competitive environment in which our companies must operate will be shaped by the extraordinarily important decisions made by Europe over the coming months,” he said.

Addressing the issue of decarbonisation, Ciarrocchi stressed that the Italian ceramic industry “supports a pragmatic approach to decarbonisation, one that adopts timeframes aligned with the realistic availability of technologies and avoids further penalising our industry, which has already achieved emission reductions unmatched on a global scale through years of significant investment”. He emphasised the need to “define environmental standards that abandon the ideological approach that until now has dominated environmental policy and sets out targets and timelines in advance without adequately considering the feasibility of these goals”.

Ciarrocchi went on to stress the fundamental and urgent need to revise the ETS system, noting that “speculation absurdly transfers resources from the real economy to finance, while the lack of technological alternatives means that the obligation to purchase CO2 quotas is nothing short of a tax on production. It is a system that also penalises cogeneration, the technology with the highest levels of energy efficiency for the same amount of primary energy used.”

Ciarrocchi was also highly critical of the EU-wide revision of the Ceramic BREF, which will establish new standards for best available techniques and associated limits. He noted that the current drafts set “incomprehensibly low limits, compliance with which seems technically impossible and where no economic assessment has been carried out to identify their actual sustainability, a condition that is expressly required by the new Industrial Emissions 2.0 Directive”.

Finally, Ciarrocchi stressed that Italy faces significantly higher natural gas and electricity prices compared to both its international competitors and other European countries. “This is a problem that must be addressed by completing the single energy market, which would reduce continental disparities and create a truly harmonised framework of rules and support for companies,” he said.

Calls for higher anti-dumping duties on Indian imports

Another major issue addressed by Augusto Ciarrocchi was international trade and the challenges posed by unfair competition. In particular, he mentioned the growing imports of low-cost ceramic tiles from India, produced in factories where worker and environmental protections are often questionable.

As expected, the current anti-dumping duties, set at less than 10%, have proved entirely ineffective in curbing the surge of Indian exports into European markets. Ciarrocchi believes this demonstrates a need for “adequate trade defence policies and instruments, including a significant increase in anti-dumping duties on Indian tile imports”. He also called for a similar measure to be imposed on Chinese tableware imports.

Continuing on the topic of international trade, Ciarrocchi reiterated the importance of Europe approving the “made in” regulation, which would mandate the compulsory indication of product origin and protect European consumers. It is “a measure that can effectively combat the distortions caused by ‘Italian-sounding’ labels, recovering significant revenues for products genuinely made in our country”, he said.

Exports to the USA

The meeting also discussed the risks associated with a potential increase in tariffs and import duties imposed by the United States, a significant concern for the Italian tile industry given that it is the leading exporter of tiles to the US in value and third in volume with 23.5 million sqm exported in the first 10 months of 2024. The concerns not only relate to the potential reduction in the volume of Italian ceramic products sold overseas but also the risk that other countries exporting to the USA may redirect their shipments to Europe. “We are confident in the ability of the Italian ceramic industry to engage in discussions and negotiations with the support of our institutions, fully aware of the quality of our products and our sales prices, which are on average double those of our competitors in the US market,” said Ciarrocchi.