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Despite the slowdown in production and commercial activities that began in spring 2023 – from which only the mechanical and food sectors remained unscathed – the Emilia-Romagna industry now expects a clear recovery: 34% of entrepreneurs expect an increase in production , with an optimist/pessimist balance of 16 points, compared to 9 points a year earlier; 32% expect orders to increase with the share of optimists exceeding pessimists by 12 points compared to 3.6 points a year ago; and more than one in two companies announces job increases by the end of June.
There is a decidedly climate of trust that can be felt along the Via Emilia, photographed in the survey on the 2023 economic situation and 2024 forecasts for the manufacturing industry, carried out in collaboration between Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna, Confindustria Emilia-Romagna and Intesa Sanpaolo. «The industry of our region confirms its good resilience and the forecasts, especially for medium-large sized companies, are positive», underlines the president of the Emilia-Romagna industrialists, Annalisa Sassi, reading the prospective data of the survey on a sample of 412 companies in the system, representing 62 thousand employees and 20.6 billion euros in turnover.
There are still many unknowns, Sassi recalls, from the high cost of energy to global demand suffocated by conflicts up to investments, suffocated «by interest rates that are still too high, and we expect a timely intervention from the ECB in this direction, but also from waiting for the concrete implementation of Industry 5.0 benefits”.
Small is not beautiful and goes off the market
What emerges more markedly than in previous economic surveys is the dichotomy between performance and expectations of medium-large companies compared to small companies, with a clear superiority of the former over the latter. The resilience of the productive fabric along the Via Emilia is certainly also explained by the phenomenon of aggregation and consolidation of the industrial base that emerges from the ten-year analysis conducted by Unioncamere: from 2013 to 2023 the number of industrial companies active in the region fell by 13, 4% (-26% in fashion, -25% in ceramic-glass) but those who exited the market were small companies, partnerships (-36.6%, over a third less in a decade), individual (-19%) and cooperatives (-18%). While joint-stock companies increased by 10.6% and now represent 42.7% of the industry. With a positive impact also on the job market, which continues to grow: +2% of those employed in industry in 2023, a double pace compared to the overall growth of employment in the region.
«We are faced with a system that travels at two speeds. On the one hand, the acceleration of large companies. On the other hand, the slowdown of small businesses worried about the decrease in orders and the internalization processes that are changing subcontracting chains. Faced with a historical phase in which global uncertainty and instability could represent the norm, it is urgent to support small businesses in aggregation processes to safeguard their professionalism and competitive strength”, highlights Valerio Veronesi, president of Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna.