Italian tanning industry results reflect challenges of 2020
Italy’s national tanning industry association, UNIC, has published full-year results for the industry for the troubled year of 2020.
Its figures put the total number of companies active in the Italian tanning industry at 1,165, with a combined total workforce of 17,274 people, down by 1.3% and 1.4% respectively.
Together, these companies produced 97.3 million square-metres of finished leather in 2020 and 6,800 tonnes of sole leather. Again, these figures indicate a decline on the previous year, of 16.4% and 30.5%, respectively.
Total revenues were just under €3.5 billion, down by 22.9% year on year. Just under €2.5 billion of this revenue came from export markets.
On presenting the figures, UNIC said: “The effects of covid-19 meant 2020 was a year that was completely out of the ordinary for the global economy. Italy’s tanning industry, like many other industrial sectors, suffered heavily from the consequences of the pandemic.”
It added that a first lockdown in the spring of 2020 had substantially halted production. Drums started turning again in May, but that output levels had been reduced. “The demand trend was extremely complicated,” UNIC said. “And the hoped-for recovery in demand in the later months of the year was severely hampered by the second wave of covid-19 that we had in the autumn.”
