Footwear still the biggest market for Italian leather
Italian tanning industry association UNIC recently published new figures detailing the performance of leather manufacturers throughout the country in 2020.
Tanners’ total output for the covid-affected year was 97.3 million square-metres of finished leather, not including sole leather. This represents a fall of 16.4% compared to the figure for 2019.
Just over 35 million square-metres of this leather, a 36.1% share of the total, went into footwear. This means footwear is still the biggest application area for finished Italian leather, even though shoe, boot and sandal manufacturers across the world consumed 20% less finished leather from Italy in 2020 than in the previous year.
Handbags and other accessories were the second-biggest market for Italy’s leather, consuming 25.5 million square-metres, 26.2% of the total. Here, too, the figure represents a fall of around 20% compared to the previous year.
Leather for automotive interiors accounted for 15.7% of the total, just over 15 million square-metres, down by 14.5% year on year.
The figure for furniture was the same, 15.7% of the total, consuming 15 million square-metres of the finished leather Italy’s tanneries produced last year. However, unlike for other markets, 2020 was a positive year for furniture, which analysts have attributed to consumers, confined to home because of covid-19 lockdowns, investing in furniture to freshen up their home environment and make it as attractive as possible. Growth for furniture leather compared to the figure for 2019 was only 0.2%, but this was the only market segment to register an increase.
Clothes and gloves consumed 3.9% of the total, around 3.75 million square-metres, a decline of 21%. UNIC attributed the remaining 2.3% to “other market segments”.
Image: Sandro Vicari.
