District exports: agri-food growing strongly in Q1 2024

During the first quarter of 2024, industrial districts exports showed a decrease of 1.1% at current prices. The result does not change if the price effect is taken into account. The balance could have been worse without the contribution of Goldsmiths of Arezzo, which showed a leap in flows to Turkey due to the strong demand for gold to counter the high inflation in the country. The slowdown in world trade has therefore ended up affecting district exports, which have been in negative territory since spring last year. This is what emerges from the National District Monitor prepared by the economists of Intesa Sanpaolo's Research Department.

At a sector level, the agri-food industry continued to grow, showing a trend increase of +6.6%. The fashion system also grew, driven by the Arezzo goldsmiths. The other sectors closed the quarter on a downward trend. Mechanics managed to limit its losses to -3.7%, while metallurgy suffered a -19.2% drop in export flows, which was also affected by the partial return of producer prices. However, export levels in the first quarter remained at historically high levels. Only fashion intermediate goods alone were about 10% below what was exported in the first three months of 2019. The brightest sector is the agri-food industry: thanks to uninterrupted growth, also favoured by rising producer prices, it presented export values almost 50% higher than at the start of 2019. For metallurgy, fashion consumer goods, other intermediate goods and household appliances the progress was about 20 %; followed by mechanics (+17.5 %), furniture (+15.2 %), metal products (+11.5 %) and construction products and materials (+10.5 %).

The districts showing growth in Q1 2024 include more sectoral specialisations and more territorial localisations: in addition to the goldsmiths' district of Arezzo, in fashion the other two Italian goldsmiths' districts, Vicenza and Valenza, the clothing district of Empoli and the knitwear and clothing district of Perugia, stand out; in agri-food, many districts stand out, led by Tuscan olive oil and the sweets districts of Alba and Cuneo; in mechanics, the best performance was achieved by Instrumental Mechanics in Milan and Monza e Brianza, Food Machinery in Parma and Paper Machinery in Lucca; in transport means, two Tuscan districts were brilliant, Nautical in Viareggio and Camping in Val d'Elsa.

The districts most affected by the worsening demand conditions include some important districts specialised in the fashion system, which have suffered from the drop in consumption, but also from a phase of normalisation of stocks after the strong accumulation in the last two years, as well as from the reorganisation of logistics platforms. This is the case, for example, with the Leather Goods and Footwear of Florence. Significant reductions were also suffered by the export flows of Brescia Metals, which, in addition to being affected by the slowdown in the German market, were also affected by falling producer prices.