Made in Italy ceramics breaks the 5 billion export wall

Italian tile price exceeds 16 euros/sqm - Price lists soar 27% in the U.S.

Figures for the first eleven months of ceramic tile exports confirm Italy as the top exporting country in the world, in a leadership position in the top of the range as confirmed by average prices that are unbreakable. While waiting for official data on the whole year, the anticipations at the end of November tell of Made in Italy tile export volumes that are almost stable (a slight decrease of -2%, with demand from Africa and Asia growing but not offsetting the drop in North America and Europe) but foreign sales in value that have come to put a +16.9% in the period.

That's 4.76 billion euros in Italian tile exports, with an additional 700 million slice of business in the space of a year that is the result solely of higher prices. In fact, to compensate for increases in energy bills-an estimated €1 billion increase in electricity and gas costs for the Italian ceramic tile sector in 2022-manufacturers decided to raise the prices of product catalogs by nearly 20 percent (+19.2 percent on average): the average price went from €13.5 in 2021 to €16.1 last November. With record cases such as the +27% increase in Made in Italy price lists in North America (an increase that meant that the 6.5% drop in volume sales of tiles between the U.S. and Canada still translated into more than 360 million more sales for Italian ceramic manufacturers. And Asian customers, where the average price of imported tiles is around €5, have come to buy Made in Italy even though it costs over four times more: €20.4/sqm, while in 2021 they were paying 15 percent less, €17.7.

Table extracted from the report "World production and consumption of ceramic tiles" by MECS Study Center

Projecting the data from the first 11 months over the entire year, Italian ceramic tile exports can be expected to be well over €5 billion in 2022. The Spaniards, the fiercest competitors of the Italian producers, stopped at 4.3 billion euros in exports by value over the 12 months, and in turn raised price lists by about 30 percent over 2021. And so they managed to offset the 13 percent drop in export volumes by collecting 16.6 percent more in value. But the price of Spanish tile-now around €10/sqm-still remains a long way from the price the market is willing to recognize for top-of-the-line Made in Italy.