Marble – Upbeat Mood in Italy

  The study noted that Italy exported 2.31 million tons of raw and finished stone with a value of €849 million from January-June 2004; that’s an increase of 10.9 percent in volume and three percent in value from the first six months of 2003. In raw and finished marble and granite, the first half of 2004 saw increases of 5.6 percent in volume and 2.7 percent in value from January-June 2003.
  “From these statistics, we can see the signs of a trend reversal have been perfectly understood, although in different ways, by the interviewees,” says Giancarlo Tonini, IMM president, “more confidently nationwide and with a more-pessimistic outlook in the Tuscan-Ligurian District. Some of these figures are reoccurring and are substantiated on a national scale – for instance, the trend to shorten order portfolios.”
  Industry opinions, however, ended up as a very mixed bag; when questioned on the level of demand in the first six months of 2004, 46 percent of Italian companies noted that they considered the trend static, while 22 percent said it was getting better and 31 percent thought it was falling. Demand from foreign countries was thought to be increasing by 32 percent of stone companies, while 38 percent thought was decreasing.
  However, 26 percent of marble companies thought the trend in demand was improving in July 2004, up from 11 percent a year earlier. In Tuscany, that outlook only came from 19 percent of the companies; it’s still better than the five percent in July 2003.
  “In any case, we will have to wait until the end of the year to be certain whether the trend of the first six months, which sees a slight recovery in exports and therefore a growth in business confidence, will be steady in the quantities and values of the exported good – a factor that is particularly important for the Tuscan companies that mainly work in quality exports,” says Paris Mazzanti, IMM’s CEO.