For capital goods a 2025 in the red

Second year in a row in decline for the capital goods sector, which in terms of global turnover yields more than one billion, 2.1% less than the levels (already slowing down) of 2024. Not a bright picture is the one exposed by the study office of Federmacchine, a vast area that includes 12 different categories of equipment, a perimeter of 52 billion in production, 5 thousand companies, and over 200 thousand employees. What is holding back production in 2025 is exports in particular, the macro-sector's historic area of strength, held back by the underlying uncertainty affecting capital goods in several markets. The overall drop in foreign sales is estimated at 5.4%, a reduction of two billion in absolute value. This is inevitable if we look at the first three outlet markets, the United States, Germany and France, which, albeit with varying intensity, in light of ISTAT data for the first nine months of the year, are all slowing down. Just as in substantial decline is China, with purchases down by almost 21 percentage points. "After the years of great expansion," explains Federmacchine president Bruno Bettelli, "the Italian capital goods industry has recently found itself having to reckon with a condition of deep and generalised geopolitical instability. This has affected our exports and, consequently, the industry's turnover. Germany's crisis, Trump's tariffs, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the closure of the Chinese market and the strengthening of manufacturing capacity in the country of the Dragon are the elements that make our business across the border really complicated. That's why it becomes even more important to have a free trade agreement with the Mercosur area, an area of 270 million consumers with a growing demand for capital goods'.

If exports lose ground, it is the domestic market that makes the year for domestic manufacturers less bitter. Although with different intensity compared to what happened for machine tools, domestic deliveries are also growing (+5.3%) for the enlarged Federmacchine area, as is total demand (including imports), which rises to 27.3 billion (+4.8%), a progress that nevertheless leaves the market still 4.4 billion away from the 2022 peaks. Domestic demand that now faces a delicate phase, in the transition from the end of the 5.0 bonus to the new incentive, which will however require another implementation decree. 'The hope,' concluded Bettelli, 'is that the measures for competitiveness envisaged by the Budget Law 2026 can actually support Italian demand, which, as our data show, has returned to growth. What is important is that the measures are clear, user-friendly, and can be used as early as the first weeks of the new year, avoiding the continuous postponements that we have unfortunately experienced with Transition 5.0 and which have frozen demand for too many months. Multiannuality of the measure and exclusivity of application to Made in Eu goods and goods with non-EU components provided they are assembled in Europe, if confirmed, are, in our opinion, excellent choices, capable of responding, on the one hand, to the need for companies to better plan their activities and, on the other, to the need to strengthen the European market, our true home market.

Even on Italian demand, however, a basic caution remains in forecasting terms. In fact, Federmacchine estimates for 2026 a stationary industry turnover, at Lire 51.85 billion, zero growth compared to 2025. Combined with exports in slight retreat (34.55 billion, -0.6%). and deliveries by manufacturers in Italy that will register only a weak growth of 1.3%, to 17.3 billion, just as total domestic consumption will be almost stationary, up just over one point to 27.6 billion.

The figures were presented at the last Federmacchine General Council meeting, which resolved the appointment of Gian Paolo Crasta (General Manager of Acimac and Ucima) as Secretary General. Crasta receives the baton from Alfredo Mariotti, who led the federation for over 30 years.