There is no other way to interpret it: The sales of Italian machine and tool manufacturers for woodworking and furniture production remain well below expectations. Compared to the same quarter in 2019, there is a 10.1 per cent decline in orders. Within Italy, there was even a decline of 32.3 per cent, while international demand was only down one per cent. Measured against the “Corona special year 2020” and especially the difficult second quarter, however, there was already an increase in orders of more than 40 percent.

Acimall’s quarterly survey among its members showed that the order backlog currently stands at 3.1 months. Due to a lack of orders in the second quarter, this figure had dropped to 2.4 months. Since the beginning of 2020, prices have risen by 0.6 percent.

The decline in turnover compared to the same quarter in 2019 is 9.5 per cent, in the second quarter of 2020 it was a minus of 29.8 per cent compared to 2019.

Furthermore, the analysis shows a positive production trend at 47 percent of the companies surveyed, 18 percent had a further decline and 35 percent had a stable business trend. 65 percent will keep their workforce stable, 29 expect to have to make redundancies and only six percent plan to hire new staff. With regard to inventories, 65 percent reported stable figures, while six percent reported an increase in inventories and 29 percent a decrease.