Textile downturn and Chinese competition weigh on the Prato area

With 95 judicial liquidations initiated in 2025, Prato is at the top of the Italian ranking of bankruptcies in relation to the number of businesses registered in the province (which number 33 thousand). The result is not too surprising for two reasons: the industrial vocation of the territory, based on the textile sector that has been shrinking for a long time, flanked in the last 25 years by the clothing produced by the Chinese people who open and close businesses with great ease; and the difficulties of commerce, linked to the drop in consumption, the overwhelming power of shopping centres and the historical absence of a policy aimed at attracting tourists.

Of the 95 judicial liquidations, 35 concern manufacturing (and among these 16 the textile sector), 22 services, 16 trade, ten catering and tourist services, eight construction and four are not classified by sector. The details, drawn up by the Pistoia-Prato Chamber of Commerce's economic studies and information office, show that of the 95 bankruptcies initiated last year, 73 are corporations, seven are partnerships, 12 are sole traders and three have other forms.

"It is a sharp snapshot of the criticalities that our production system is going through, and it reveals a crisis that affects the different sectors asymmetrically," says Dario Caserta, head of the Pistoia-Prato Chamber of Commerce's research office.

The dominance of the capital companies is explained by the fact that 'for an organised structure, judicial liquidation is the only formal and often compulsory route to deal with insolvency', adds the Chamber, emphasising that the 16 procedures in the textile sector 'reflect the complex restructuring phase that the district is facing'.

But the tension is also strong in the tertiary sector (26 bankruptcies between commerce and tourism/restaurants, the sector with the highest incidence): "The data is the reflection of a financial fragility that often affects less structured companies," explains Caserta, "increasingly crushed between the contraction of marginality and the weakening of the domestic market. For Confindustria Toscana nord (Prato, Pistoia, Lucca), the data "are the mirror of a complicated moment for the entire system," says president Fabia Romagnoli. "That it is manufacturing companies that pay the highest price is not surprising," she adds, "given the productive profile of the province, which has fashion and mechanical-textile at its core. But the low incidence of bankruptcies in business services (two, ndr) means that manufacturing is still strong and is the reference point for an advanced tertiary sector that in turn qualifies it".