Cars and textiles sink production: in September -0.4% month-on-month and -4% year-on-year

A drop of 0.4 per cent compared to August, a reduction of four points year-on-year. This is yet another drop (the 20th consecutive in trend terms) for Italian industrial production, which in light of September's reduction at this point in the first nine months of 2024 is in the red by 3.4%.

As has been the case in the past few months, it is transport equipment (-15.4%, the worst sector for the period due to cars) and textiles-clothing that are putting the brakes on averages. Although on closer inspection, among the manufacturing sectors monitored by Istat only electronics and electrical equipment managed to grow compared to September 2023. Many sectors have been in the red since the beginning of the year, with fashion and textiles paying the highest price for the slowdown in demand, with a drop of close to 11%.

Not brilliant data in part already visible in the quarterly ISTAT estimates on GDP, which for the July-September period, a few days ago, had presented an Italian zero-growth picture, economic resilience linked, however, to the services sector, with industry making a negative contribution on average. Substantiated, in the latest estimates by Intesa Sanpaolo and Prometeia, in a drop in turnover 2024 in the order of 20 billion euro, a 1.7% drop in revenues at current values with reductions spread across several sectors.

Not an unexpected result considering the stagnation of domestic demand (both consumption and investments at the pole) but also international demand, with exports in the first eight months of the year falling back by 0.6%. Not a disaster, certainly, but not the boost that would be needed to significantly reignite factories. Weighing on this is Europe, down two points due to the braking of our largest outlet market, Germany, which in eight months has 'subtracted' from our export companies almost three billion euro compared to 2023, paying for the slowdown in several sectors. Starting with the vast area of construction, which is on half the volume compared to the pre-Covid period (51 thousand building permits between January and August 2024, 97 thousand in the same period in 2019). Also struggling in Berlin is the auto industry, which is fluctuating in production terms at last year's levels (-1% between January and September, with September up nine points) but whose overall structure is creaking, with several plants at real risk of closure. And the latest figures on industrial production, down 4.6% year-on-year in September, testify to the persistence of a widespread weakness that has by no means been overcome.

Reduced international demand is throwing sand into the wheels of Italian manufacturing, which is in difficulty in the textile-clothing sector (Florence alone, for example, has lost 800 million in exports, over 16%, in six months), but also in metals, rubber-plastics, furniture and cars, the latter sector falling by over 10 points in foreign sales. Cars in fact continue to represent the system's most visible point of weakness, with a double-digit fall in production that has been stable since March, with the -36% trend in June then repeated in July, to which was added the almost halving (-42%) in August.