Boating and shipbuilding, industrial production exceeds clothing

The industrial production of the nautical supply chain in its entirety, counting the Ateco (economic activity) codes of all the companies working in the sector, reached 14 billion euros, exceeding the 11.7 billion of one of the historical sectors of made in Italy, i.e. clothing.

The figure (which refers to 2024, the most recent year available for ISTAT classification and also contains the revenues of yacht refit and maintenance companies and of a large group such as Fincantieri) emerges from a report (significantly titled La Repubblica marinara) by the Centro studi Cipnes Gallura-UniOlbia, which has adopted an approach based on ISTAT data on industrial production and will be presented today at the Nautical Fair of Sardinia, underway until 10 May in Porto Rotondo.

'This methodological choice,' says Guido Piga, Head of Communication and Study Centre, 'allows us to read the nautical and shipbuilding sectors as a single manufacturing chain. In this perspective, the shipbuilding and nautical sector in Italia (which includes the general Ateco code for ship and boat building, 30.1, and the specific ones relating to the construction of ships, 30.11, and that of pleasure boats, 30.12, ed.) counts 1,013 companies, with €13.2 billion in revenues and 32,479 employees, based on the balance sheets filed in 2024".

A second element of discontinuity, Piga points out, "concerns the economic size of the pleasure boating industry (Atec 30.12), which reaches 6.4 billion in revenues, a higher value than the available estimates. The result comes from a detailed analysis of companies, which also included companies formally classified in Ateco 30.1 but, in fact, active in the production of pleasure boats, such as The italian sea group, Palumbo superyacht, Rossinavi, Cantiere delle Marche and Tankoa yachts. These alone weigh in at 800 million'.

In fact, the figure differs from that recorded, again for 2024, by the Confindustria nautica study office, which calculates 5.44 billion in national production. However, the difference is due to the fact that the latter figure, taken from the annual publication La nautica in cifre (The Boating Industry in Figures), makes a broader skimming of companies in the sector, going beyond the indications of Ateco codes and also taking into consideration what, in the budgets of companies in the sector, is specifically referred to the construction of new pleasure craft, separating it from what, instead, refers to other items.