36 | Panel Perspectives: Italy panels market
SECTOR HOPES FOR 2024 BOOST
ITALIAN PANELS Italian wood-based panel producers, like most European manufacturers,
have faced their fair share of challenges over the past two years, but is the future looking potentially brighter as we head into 2024? WBPI correspondent Eugene Gerden reports
W
hile no-one has a crystal ball, the Italian wood-based panels sector could be looking at some more positive economic signs as we head into 2024, following 18 months of difficult markets caused by a drop in customer demand and record cost increases.
The Italian panels sector – rated as the third largest panels industry in the EU after Germany and France – experienced aggravated operating conditions in 2022 and 2023, with the Russian-Ukranian war complicating things and causing more inflationary pressures.
Italy secured 40% of its gas imports from Russia before the conflict started, with this rate halving in 2022. As has happened across Europe, domestic demand for furniture and building panel products has been suffering. That led to the overall decline of sales of panels both in export and especially domestic markets.
The additional factor of the end of a period of pent-up demand, as one of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, has exacerbated the situation. Still, despite the market gloom, there
have been signs in recent months that the situation has generally stabilised, providing optimism among some of Italy’s major industry players for a return to better market conditions sometime in 2024. The Italian panels’ market is largely dominated by medium-sized businesses, along with major domestic players and global majors. Most of these companies and their production facilities are located in the northern part of Italy, between Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont and Emilia Romagna, with 27% of the total, but their regional distribution is quite homogeneous. In 2023 many of them were faced with a significant decline of orders, although since
the second half of 2023 the situation has arguably begun to moderate. Last year, the costs of wood, energy
and raw materials declined, but market leaders, among which are Fantoni, Saviola and Kastamonu, have still expressed serious concerns about the weakness of the very large Italian furniture sector – one of the major consumers of panels in Italy. According to local panel producers, the share of energy costs in the overall structure of costs had declined from 60% in 2022-2023 to the average of 30%, which is, however still higher than the pre-crisis figures of 20%. Italian panel producers were also faced with a sharp rise in urea prices, which even forced some of them to suspend their production for some time. Panel prices have increased, leading to some questions about the competitiveness of Italian furniture industry exports on global markets.
Above: Fantoni production plant WBPI | December 2023/January 2024 |
www.wbpionline.com
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