ISTAT data on Italian foreign trade for plastics and rubber machinery, equipment and moulds for the first three quarters of 2016, compared to the same period in 2015, show that imports continue to rise (+8.5%) and exports have returned to positive values (+1.5%).
The recovery in sales abroad comes after the negative performance that had characterized previous months and is related to increased sales of injection moulding machines and moulds.
For what concerns the main destination areas of the Italian sector exports, we can notice:
- sales to the principal market, Europe, have fallen off by a couple of percentage points, with a 58% share of the total. Within this context, EU markets show a drop in sales of 1.8% while extra-EU markets fell by a more limited -0.5%. The former were influenced primarily by lower sales to Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Romania. As regards the rest of Europe, the critical situation in Russia continues to exert an impact, somewhat mitigated by increased sales towards other countries
- Mexico drives the progress of the sales to the NAFTA area. In South America, Brazil is still contracting strongly
- in Asia, good sales to China (+9%), India (+42%)
- within Middle East, positive results for Iran (+64%)
- in Africa: a significant drop in average sales to Morocco and Tunisia versus strong growth in South Africa
- exports to Oceania (essentially Australia) have dropped off by nearly half.