Growing markets

After the encouraging January-June 2010 export-import results for Germany, Japan, China and Switzerland (and Italy as well, for January-May), France, the United States and Taiwan have also shown recovery in their fields of trade.
The drop-off in French imports slackened and exports held quite stable with respect to the first half of 2009. Noteworthy however is the remarkable increase in blow moulding machines, which represent some 25% of total exports and are mainly produced by one major manufacturer. The value of this trade jumped from approximately 70 to over 100 million euro.
In line with the general economic recovery (apart from the latest news about the local real estate/property market), there is a decidedly positive trend for the United States. After many quarters on the wane with the decline extending into January-March 2010 (-11%), the US recorded an uptrend in imports, thanks to injection moulding machines, flexographic printing machines, extruders and presses for tires and inner tubes.
In the first half of 2010, Italy was the fifth-largest technology provider for American processors and imports from our country racked up a higher growth rate (+33%) than those of the higher ranking competitors.
As regards US exports, moderate growth was sustained by booming sales of extruders (from 27 to 53 million dollar).
The even better performance recorded by Taiwan (+61% for imports and +46% for exports) confirms the still positive trend in the Asian region, resulting from the recovery of purchases of injection moulding machines (+136%, up to more than 30 million euro, 71% sold by Japan) and extruders (+26% or almost 20 million euro, the vast majority supplied by Japan as well).
Injection moulding machines represent the major share of exports (one third of the total) and more than doubled their value with respect to the first half of 2009, up to about 75 million euro; the number one destination market is China/Hong Kong (43% of the total).