Vicenza, 17/04/07 – As it always does ahead of Vicenzaoro Spring ¬– the international exhibition of gold jewelry, silverware and watches, scheduled for 12 to 16 May – Vicenza Fair has processed the ISTAT (Italian Statistics Office) figures for Italian jewelry exports for the whole of 2006. These show that in December 2006, the exports of the gold and jewelry industry – as measured by ISTAT – recorded an exceptional upward leap in value terms. For this entire year they rose 9.7% over 2005, hitting the 4.4 billion euro mark. As it has been calculated in euros, this increase was influenced both by the price rises for precious raw materials, as well as by the strengthening of the euro against the dollar. Without the action of these distorting factors, exports of Italian jewelry would be below 2005 levels in real terms. Indeed, the variations in quantity terms, calculated by ISTAT, indicate a concomitant slump of -7.9% of foreign jewelry sales for 2006. Nevertheless, these same observations apply to trends for jewelry consumption in Italy recorded by the World Gold Council for 2006 which indicate a 9% drop in the domestic Italian market for 2006. The first indications regarding trends for jewelry exports (in value) in January 2007 highlight a further redimensioning of Italian jewelry exports for that month, which can be interpreted more than anything else as a technical "bounce" after the exceptional increase in December 2006. During 2006, shipments of Italian jewelry in the various geopolitical areas worldwide were quite dissimilar and sometimes opposite. The great variability in the trends can not only be traced to the different economic situations in the various destinations but also in the difficulties the Italian production apparatus has in putting down roots in international markets. The prize for the best sprint in 2006 must go jointly to Eastern Europe and to Latin America, with increases of 20/25% in each area. Italian gold exports benefited in 2006 from an extraordinary performance in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The growth in exports of Italian jewelry towards these economies was more than 30% (compared with one year earlier). In third and fourth places – again in terms of variations calculated on values that also include price increases, as we have already underlined several times – came Asia and the Middle East with +13.5% and +15.6% respectively. It was only at the end of 2006 that some consolidated economies regained some of the ground previously lost. As a result, North America recorded an average for the year of +5%, the synthesis of positive variations of various sizes in the NAFTA countries (United States: +5.5%, Mexico: +38.9%, Canada: +0.7%). Once again, the sales situation for Italian jewels in Euroland (up 1.4% overall) was composite. On the one hand increases in jewelry sales were recorded in Switzerland (+4.5%), in the UK (+6.4%), in Greece (+7,4%) and in the Netherlands (+2.4%). On the other hand, drops were recorded in direct exports to Romania (-19.8%), to Portugal (-9.4%) and to Germany (-10.5%), even though towards the end of 2006, its domestic market benefited from the rush by Germans to make advance purchases in order to partly offset the effects of the increase in German VAT from the start of 2007. Along with the reports for the whole of 2006, ISTAT also published the figures for the provenance of jewelry exports. What emerges from the first analysis is that in some production poles the year was marked by a more consistent recovery in exports than that enjoyed by the jewelry industry as a whole. The renewed boost can also be traced to widespread company reorganization processes and to the search for new business areas.
In detail, increases in foreign sales were noted for Valenza Po (+24.6%), for Milan (+7.1%) as well as for Vicenza (+13.6%) and for Arezzo (+5.2%). Instead, drops were noted in sales from the production poles of Rome (-8.3%) and Naples (-13.2%). Vicenza and Arezzo remain at the top of the list for the leading exporters among the jewelry production poles, respectively with 37.2% and 32.2% of the total. Overall, the two production supply chains of Vicenza and Arezzo generate well over two thirds of total Italian jewelry exports.