The good performance – to put it mildly – of the textile machinery is positive news for many reasons. First of all it is for the sector, which is worth about a billion in turnover and is an excellence in excellence, that of Italian mechanics and mechatronics. But there is more: the V-shaped recovery of the textile machinery is the confirmation of the strength and complexity of the textile-fashion-accessory supply chain (Tma), in which the mechanical component should be included, at least ideally. We come then to the other positive aspect of the sector data: they anticipate, indeed, ensure the recovery of the entire TMA, which in 2019 had touched one hundred billion in turnover, but then lost 26% in the annus horribilis of Covid. . A virtuous circle confirmed by Ugo Ghilardi, CEO of Itema, one of the Italian and global leaders in the sector, and vice president of Acimit, the association of textile machinery companies.
«In the last decades and in particular when the world has entered the era of globalization, the Italian textile districts have grown together with the companies of our sector and vice versa – explains Ghilardi -. An exchange that Italian companies have also managed to have with customers from other countries to which we export. It is a distinctive trait of Italian manufacturing and of Italians more generally: we can call it flexibility, of course. But, at least in our world, it is not enough to be creative and flexible: we need, in at least equal measure, discipline and vision».
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Itema Group, whose main office is in Colzate (Bergamo), closed the first half with revenues up 46% and an increase in frames shipped by 56% compared to the same period in 2020 and for the entire year the turnover will exceed the 300 million, with a 100% increase in sales in Italy, a figure that indicates the recovery of the entire supply chain in our country, already confirmed by the half-yearly data of large groups in the sector, from Aeffe to Prada, passing through Ferragamo and Gucci. The numbers of Itema are higher than the entire sector, for which in any case – and they are conservative estimates – an average annual growth (CAGR) between now and 2024 of 4.9% is expected, a rate that for the “sub-sector” of machinery weaving rises to 7.2%, with a boom in 2021 (+ 17%).
«They will be driving the Italian textile machinery China and Vietnam, where a large portion of the world‘s textile-clothing production is concentrated, but also Turkey and India – underlines Ghilardi, wearing the hat of Acimit vice president -. It is thanks to these two countries that our sector had already started to grow again at interesting rates between the end of 2019 and the first months of 2020, when the pandemic had not yet broken out. The truth is that today it is very difficult to make medium-long term forecasts: alongside unpredictable events such as Covid, there are geopolitical unknowns, on which companies, associations and even individual countries cannot affect that much “.
However, they remain room for maneuver and innovation at the same time promising, necessary and fascinating, Ghilardi says, putting on the hat of CEO of Itema: «The data just released by the United Nations confirm the red alert that the planet is launching, but no one who is in good faith can be surprised. Precisely because it is necessary to change the way we produce and consume all together, our company, the sector and many others have been involved for years in the design of a different model, which transforms the linear economy into circular and sustainable from an environmental and social point of view. . We must find – adds Ugo Ghilardi – the technical way to make this epochal and cultural change and we must understand how to continue to create value, moving within a completely distorted framework. Returning to good faith, no one can say that the so-called green change will have no costs, even heavy ones ».