Packaging machinery exports, China and the U.S. beat Italy and Germany

China and the United States beat Italy and Germany by more than 15 points. This is the picture that emerges when reading the 2022 export performance of the four big players in the global packaging machinery market, compiled by the Mecs study center from ITC Trademap data.

The four manufacturers and exporters of packaging technology account for more than 60 percent of world trade, and Germany and Italy alone have historically been worth about half of the total, within easy reach of each other (€5.27 billion Italian export, €5.78 billion German). This is a leadership position that is difficult to maintain if the dynamics of 2022 continue.

In fact, while the two European giants in 2022 were losing 265 million euros of business on foreign markets (249 million euros lost by Germany with a -4.1 percent year-on-year; 16 million less for Made in Italy with a -0.3 percent on 2021), China gained new spaces among customers-not only Asian but also North American! - to the tune of more than 410 million euros, arriving last year to increase exports by 17.3 percent and close to 2.8 billion euros. Meanwhile, the United States increased its packaging machinery exports by 15.5 percent (totaling 1.2 billion), or 163 million euros more.

The signal to be read most carefully is the one emerging in the two most strategic markets for German and Italian manufacturers, but where they are losing positions, namely Europe and North America. Here U.S. competitors are gaining share instead: in the EU, American machines made +17.1 percent in 2022 (Germany and Italy -3.3 and -3.1 percent, respectively). And in their local market, North America, the star-spangled manufacturers increased sales by 11.1 percent in 2022, while the Germans lost 10.4 percent of exports (the Italians held their positions with +5.2 percent).

And even more alarming is the substitution of European technologies for Chinese ones precisely in the North American markets: Xi Jinping's technologies - again from Mecs elaborations on ITC Trademap data - put up a 22.8 percent sales increase in North America in 2022 (71 million euros more in exports), thus offsetting more than half of the export lost instead by Germany in the same year on that market.