In March the wood-furniture sector + 8.7%, exceeds pre-Covid levels

Last March, the Italian wood-furniture sector recovered the levels of 2019, preceding the pandemic crisis. Cumulative production in Italy in the previous twelve months recorded an increase of 0.8% on 2019, compared with the delay of 5.3% in France and 5.7% in Germany. The sector that has best recovered pre-pandemic production levels, according to data from Confartigianato Lombardia, is that of Wood-Furniture, with an increase of 8.7%. For the wood and furniture manufacturing system, the tensions on the costs generated by expensive raw materials and the energy crisis are associated with the scarcity of raw materials, which in the first quarter of 2022 hinders almost one in four manufacturing companies (22.7%), to rise 24.2% for furniture, up to 27.6% for wood. On the labor market, the difficulty in finding skilled workers persists, which in the wood sector in May 2022 was 59.4%, an increase of 5.8 points compared to a year earlier. Italy is the second largest furniture producing country in the European Union, with a production value of 20.5 billion euros in 2020, behind Germany with 21.3 billion and ahead of Poland with 11.3 billion. to France with 5.8 billion and to Spain with 5.5 billion. The wood and furniture sector has 37 thousand micro and small enterprises with less than 50 employees, in which 153 thousand people are employed, 98.7% of the companies in the sector. The foreign sales of Made in Italy furniture show a marked territorial specialization. The twelve provinces arranged along the ‘furniture axis’ of the Po Valley (Udine, Pordenone, Venice, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, Monza and Brianza and Como) in 2021 recorded a total of two thirds ( 65.9%) of exports, equal to 7.1 billion euros.