According to the latest study by the Italian Packaging Machinery Manufacturing Association (UCIMA), the world market demand for packaging machinery will mark up an annual growth of 4.9% over the next three years to reach an estimated value of 40.3 billion euros in 2018.
This growth will be driven by demand from Asia, Africa and Oceania (+7.1%), followed by that of Latin America (+5.6%).
In absolute terms, food will remain the main client sector, accounting for 31.8% of total demand (12.8 billion euros) followed by beverages at 31.5% (12.7 billion euros).
The breakdown of demand by types of machinery only partially reflects the breakdown by client sectors. Wrapping machines are expected to see the biggest percentage growth over the three-year period (+5.6%), followed by filling machines (+5.2%) and labelling machines (+5.0%).
The EU will see 3% growth to a total market value of 10.7 billion euros, driven by 4.8% growth in cosmetics industry machinery, 4.1% in food machinery and 3.5% growth in machinery for the chemicals industry.
Italian machinery exports are expected to outperform the world average with higher than average growth in the EU (+3.2%), North America (+4.6%), Africa and Oceania (+7.7%).
In the current year Italian packaging machinery manufacturers are reporting a performance in line with last year’s results, when the sector achieved yet another record turnover of 6.3 billion euros.