The market for machinery and equipment for gardening and the maintenance of green areas ended 2015 on the plus side and forecasts point to further growth over the current year, according to statistics compiled by Comagarden, an association in the Italian Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers Federation, based on data gathered by Morgan on the main types of units sold on the domestic market. The 2015 balance sheet showed a total of 1,233.286 units sold for a 1.3% gain over 2014. A rundown of the single types of products disclosed a substantial 5.8% increase for chainsaws with 346,558 units reported, a greater gain of 8.5% at 85,000 units for blowers/vacuums and cultivators up 3.8% at 31,340 units. A double digit surge was reported for robotic mowers, a 16% gain with 15,170 units moved, and 91,366 hedge trimmers sold marked a more modest increase, plus 1.9%. Customer and professional ride-ons rose 0.9% and 0.3% on 8.096 units and 3,154 units. Reported on the down side were mowers, off 4.8% at 286.660 units, and customer lawn tractors, minus 4.6% at 22,371 units sold. Further down were snowblowers with 6.085 units for a slide of 8.1% resulting from a season of especially mild weather which evidently cut into demand for special technologies for snow clearance.
The picture presented this morning in Montichiari at the press conference set in the Life in the Country exposition also disclosed expectations of a favorable 2016 thanks to an especially short winter and early vegetation occurring and plants going into bloom, factors which should drive machinery and equipment demand for the maintenance of public and private green areas and groundskeeping of urban greenery and sports facilities.
Federica Tugnoli, the Comagarden executive secretary, said, “The market in the sector is strongly fragmented with differing distribution channels, from garden centers to big distribution businesses and on to the networks of sales of agricultural machinery and equipment, and this makes thorough monitoring of the statistics difficult to reach a precise estimate of the sector as regards sales. Of course, if we went ahead with analyses of the data on value, the growth in percentages would be different. In fact, on one hand it's difficult for companies to raise their sticker prices and, on the other, the market is oriented to some degree on first price products to disadvantage for the top of the range.”
She went on to explain, “However, we are fine turning increasingly refined methods for gaining a timely understanding of the market and the direction taken by the public as regards the various types of products.”
During the press conference, it was made clear that an excellent occasion for monitoring this market is coming up with EIMA Green Salon, focused on gardening and greenskeeping machinery and equipment, set for next November 9th to 13th in Bologna in the setting of the EIMA International exposition of agricultural machinery and equipment.
This great global event will host 1,900 exhibiting manufacturers, a number of business people arriving from 130 countries around the world, which set an all-time record of 236,000 for the 2014 edition, plus more than 70 official delegations from abroad.
The EIMA Green Salon is also a world class event for business people in the sector in featuring more than 200 manufacturing industries taking over more than 11,000 m² in fair Pavilions33 and 34. In these areas Italian technologies will play a leading role and can be expected to reap rewards of growing demand, mainly in the Western European markets and especially France and Germany, in line with trade data by the Italian National Statistics Institute, ISTAT, reporting 2015 Italian exports of lawnmowers surging by 22% with a value of more than € 270 million.
Federica Tugnoli affirmed, “Locating the salon on gardening in the review of agricultural mechanical engineering has turned out to be a winning choice because gardening professionals, who extend partially into agricultural mechanization, are an increasingly expanding category in multifunctional activities which broadly involve the management of green areas and actually straddle agricultural and gardening maintenance as properly defined.”
