Not only Ferrari, Lamborghini, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Gucci, Luxottica, Barilla, Ferrero, B&B Italia, Pirelli, Leonardo, Fincantieri. As repeated in every annual report by the ICE (Agency for the promotion abroad and the internationalization of Italian companies), chaired by Carlo Ferro, 80% of exporting companies are small and medium-sized. They are few: only 136 thousand companies sell abroad, yet the exports they generate account for over 30% of GDP.
Not only that: according to Sace (the public company of Italian export credit), SMEs active across the border gain market share and the post-Covid recovery is linked to exports, as well as a wise use of funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan ( Pnrr). Moreover, the NRP supports exporting SMEs in digital and ecological transition, through the refinancing for 1.2 billion of the Fund 394/81 managed by Simest.
Even the vice president of Confindustria for internationalization, Barbara Beltrame Giacomello, pointed out in the final paper of the B20 Trade & Investment task force that “trade and investments are the main drivers of sustainable development, therefore they are an integral part of the recovery, which must strength to be based on the revival of global trade and investment “.
Yet, the Italian exporting SMEs seem hidden under the cloak of Harry Potter’s invisibility. To give some faces to a small representation of this silent multitude, Il Sole 24 Ore and the analysis company Statista have launched the first list of “Export Champions”, reserved for manufacturing companies willing to tell their story and apply for the ranking . The research team of Statista, based in Germany, has invited nine thousand companies to participate, after an initial analysis of their data drawn from the major databases. The announcement has been published online. Only those who provided the data of the 2020 financial statements (reference year for this edition) were subjected to analysis and positioned in the ranking, based on the share of exports on turnover. The first 200 entered the list, with record export quotas: between 99% and 31%. All in the annus horribilis of Covid and exports (-9.7% in 2020).
To get on the podium of this first all-uphill edition are companies with a production almost entirely dedicated to the foreign market, which have resisted the Covid crisis with unique resilience and anti-fragility, winning away from home.