ITALY – The July-September period reaffirmed the current industry trend, characterized by consolidation after strong growth in 2017.

After major investments in Italy and abroad in recent months, woodworking and wood-based materials companies finally have a new and updated fleet of equipment. As a result, the need to invest is now decreasing. This consideration is essential to analyze the results for the third quarter 2018 processed by the Studies Office of Acimall, the Confindustria member association that represents the manufacturers of machinery and plants.

On the whole, figures indicate a slight slowdown of orders, although Italian companies are substantially “holding on” and keep showing great vitality, achieving an expansion of domestic orders 14.7 percent higher than the same quarter in 2017.

The “sore point”, is represented by foreign orders, down by 10.9 percent in the July-September period of this year, compared to the same quarter of last year. On the whole, orders in Q3 2018 decreased by 7.7 percent against the same period of 2017, which as stated before was an extraordinary year for Italian woodworking machinery exports.

It is also worth noticing that turnover in the third quarter, according to Acimall surveys, increased by 12.2 percent over the same period in 2017, thus reaffirming the good health of the industry.