The year 2024 opens with a minus sign for the wood-furniture supply chain. According to Infodata processed on Istat data by FederlegnoArredo's Study Center, in fact, in the period January-February 2024 the wood-furniture supply chain marked a 1.3 percent drop in exports compared to the same months in 2023, confirming the negative trend also recorded in January. 

The president of FederlegnoArredo, Claudio Feltrin, commented on these figures, stressing that "for a sector devoted to exports like ours, this is not an encouraging figure, but at the same time, contextualized in a negative economic situation and a highly unstable geopolitical framework, it is correct to say that it would have been unlikely to expect different numbers. Rather, it is more correct to interpret the figure as an element of resilience and settling of the sector, in light of the overall context."

Positive note, the recovery of the U.S. market

In fact, FederlegnoArredo's Infodata highlights how the negative performance of two countries that are fundamental for the exports of the products of our supply chain: 

France, which marks -4 percent (519 million) and Germany even at -8.1 percent. "The only positive note that at the moment leaves some breathing space for our Made in Italy is the recovery of the U.S. market, which," Feltrin anticipates, "is performing +11.9%. In the top 5 still negative sign also for the United Kingdom (-10.8%) while Spain can be said to be stable at +0.8%."
 

Furniture down in March

The most negative elements, however, come from Istat's Foreign Trade data: furniture (March 2024 over March 2023) hits -13.8 percent, while in the previous two months the situation was still stable (-0.7 percent). Confirming this, industrial production in March dropped again (-7.3 percent) as it did in January (-7.1 percent) after a February that had instead recorded the same figure as in '23, thus reaching a cumulative first quarter figure of -4.9 percent for furniture. On the wood front, the March production decline is at -2.9%, bringing the cumulative first-quarter figure to -3.3%.
 

Optimism for the second half of 2024

Optimism for the second half of 2024 "Our feeling," Feltrin concludes, “is that precisely March represents the lowest point of the curve's descent, which will be followed by a few months of stabilization that will anticipate an upturn in the second half of 2024 in which we believe clear skies will return”. This hypothesis would be reflected in the data on the climate of confidence: furniture companies, for the next three months (May-July), anticipate a stable situation, but expectations on orders reach a positive balance (+5 percent) which, coupled with stationary production expectations, hint at at least a stable second quarter for furniture, which could herald an upward phase in the second half of '24. More critical would remain the situation for wood with judgments on orders in April worsening, but even here, expectations expressed for the coming months have a positive balance (+7 percent).