Tuscany takes silver in exports thanks to Arezzo’s gold
The province saw a doubling of figures in the first quarter, with sales of bullion to Switzerland increasing tenfold; the jewellery sector, however, is struggling.
by Luca Orlando
From 485 million to over four billion. It is this surge in particular that is driving the national export figures: the exponential increase in sales of precious metals from the Arezzo district to Switzerland, with figures for the first quarter of 2026 having risen almost tenfold compared with the same period in 2025.
Arezzo, in fact, thanks precisely to this surge, was the top-performing Italian province in the January–March period, with figures almost doubling, placing it third amongst exporting provinces behind Milan and Florence: twelve months earlier, however, it had been only tenth. The district’s metal dealers and refiners have achieved an absolute record, exporting precious metals worth over six billion euros in total (to Switzerland and the rest of the world) during the quarter – triple the figure for the same period in 2025 – accounting for 60 per cent of the national total for this product category, which for Italia as a whole saw quarterly exports of 10.3 billion, double the figure for the January–March 2025 period.
Tuscany, as a result of this surge, is by far the best-performing region in the first quarter in terms of export growth, with an increase of over 30 per cent – a leap that allows it to edge ahead of Emilia-Romagna (and also Veneto), placing it just behind Lombardy for the first time.
This growth is certainly underpinned by the surge in the price of gold, which has soared by an average of over 50 per cent in 12 months, but this alone is not enough to explain the growth. The other factor is, in fact, the weakness of the other traditional market for Arezzo-based companies: domestic demand.
“The jewellery sector is currently struggling,” explains Maria Cristina Squarcialupi , president of Federorafi and managing director of the Chimet Group, “and the gold that is not returned to the domestic market is sold abroad, in this case in the form of ingots. Switzerland, in turn, uses it in many ways: there are the Swiss banks themselves, which hoard it; the watch market, which has never stopped; and then exports to other countries, such as India or China.”
