Market report Significant decline for the Italian machine tool industry in 2024

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UCIMU-Sistemi per Produrre

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The Italian machine tool industry faced a turbulent 2024, with domestic performance plunging while exports soared to record highs. Ucimu President Riccardo Rosa sheds light on the challenges at home, the bright spots abroad, and the urgent need for reforms like Transizione 5.0 to secure a modest recovery in 2025.

The Italian machine tool industry faced a challenging 2024, marked by a sharp decline in domestic performance but offset by record-breaking exports. Riccardo Rosa, President of Ucimu-Sistemi per Produrre, shared these insights during the end-of-year press conference, highlighting both the current struggles and the prospects for a modest recovery in 2025.

Preliminary data from Ucimu’s Centro Studi reveal an 11.4 percent drop in production, driven by weak domestic demand, while exports remained a bright spot, achieving a new record. The decrease is due entirely to the significant reduction in deliveries by manufacturers to the domestic market, which remained at 2,255 million euros, down 33.5 percent on 2023, due to the low investment propensity of Italian users.

This weakness is reflected in the decline in domestic consumption of 34.8 percent to 3,795 million euros. This trend also affected imports, which fell by 36.5 percent to 1,540 million euros.

The performance of Italian manufacturers in the foreign market is the opposite, as the export figure shows, which rose by 6.3 percent to 4,490 million euros compared to 2023, a new record value that had never been reached before.

According to Istat data, processed by Ucimu, regarding the period January-August 2024 (last survey available), the main markets for Italian machine tools were: the United States (419 million euros, + 17.8 percent); Germany (243 million, +12.3 percent); China ( 138 million, -15.3 percent); India (132 million, +100 percent); France ( 125 million, -9.3 percent). The export/production ratio rose to 66.6 percent.

A return to positive territory is expected by 2025, but with a very modest increase.

In particular, according to the Centro Studi Ucimu forecasts, production will rise again in 2025 and settle at 6,940 (+2.9 percent compared to 2024).

The result is determined both by the positive development of exports, which will experience a stagnation compared to the 2024 figure (+0.3 percent) and settle at 4,505 million euros (a new record ), and the modest increase in deliveries by Italian manufacturers, which will rise to 2,435 million euros (+8 percent compared to 2024), driven by the revival of domestic demand.

Italian consumption of machine tools, robots and automation systems will increase to 4,070 million, i.e. 7.2 percent more than in 2024. According to the forecast, which predicts an increase of 6.2 percent to 1,635 million euros, imports will also benefit from the (weak) recovery in domestic demand.

The export/production ratio is slightly down and will settle at 64.9 percent.

Riccardo Rosa, President of Ucimu, commented: “ The year that is now coming to an end once again highlights the ability of Italian manufacturers to direct their activities towards the most dynamic areas of the world, starting with the USA, where we have been working well for several years. However, if we go one step further, the fear that the new US administration could introduce a new customs policy for goods related to our production puts us on alert and we need to be aware of our internationalisation activities.”

“On the other hand,” continued Riccardo Rosa, “the big problem for manufacturers remains the domestic market, which is only just starting up again with difficulty after consumption at an unprecedented rate, and also the long waits for the optimisation and simplification of the Transizione 5.0, which were announced by the government authorities in November but have not yet been implemented”.

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