As amply predicted, the Covid-19 emergency that joined an already unfavorable global economic picture in the first half of 2020 saw a sharp drop in exports for the Italian stone\/techno-stone industry, which encompasses both materials and stone-working technologies. According to official statistics processed by the Confindustria Marmomacchine Studies Center, in the first six months of the year Italian stone companies\u2019 foreign sales in fact dropped by 25%, from 1.405 to 1.053 million euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We remind readers that the Italian stone\/techno-stone sector has more than 3,200 companies and some 34,000 employees, with 2019 revenue of nearly 3.9 billion euros, exports worth 2.9 billion, a heavy propensity to export (which reached 73.9% of the value of output) and above all an annual trade balance of more than 2.5 billion \u2013 around 5% of Italy\u2019s overall trade balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About the sector situation spoke Flavio Marabelli, Honorary President of Confindustria Marmomacchine, who during the association\u2019s recent general assembly provided a statistical analysis, stressing that \u201cthe health emergency has had heavy repercussions on trends in our industry, which in the first half of the year registered a decrease of about a quarter of its exports from the same period in 2019. The first signs of an uptake came only in June, when sales of both finished stone materials and of stone technologies showed an encouraging trend reversal, getting close to monthly pre-Covid levels. On the other hand, exports of raw materials continue to do badly. Whether data for June showed the start of an effective rebound will be known only in the second half of the year, although it will be hard to compensate for the losses in the first part of the year and return to 2019 amounts<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assomarmomacchine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Flavio_Marabelli-1024x659.jpg\")
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