Italy’s technology sector for footwear, leather goods and tanning contracted for a third straight year in 2025, prompting industry association Assomac to call for a permanent supply chain working group and a more coordinated national industrial policy.
Production in the sector was estimated at 512 million euros last year, down 11% and extending a downturn that began in 2023, following a 12% decline in 2024, Assomac said, citing data from its Research Centre. The figures were presented at the association’s General Assembly, held at the Fondazione Cariplo Congress Centre in Milan.
“Made in Italy does not begin when a product is sold, but much earlier: in capital goods, expertise, manufacturing and entrepreneurial capability,” Assomac President Mauro Bergozza told the assembly. “This strategic heritage fuels the strength of our supply chains and the competitiveness of the Italian industrial system.”
The contraction was uneven across segments. Tanning machinery recorded the sharpest fall, down 24.5%, while leather goods machinery declined 9.8% and footwear machinery fell 4.1%. Spare parts and maintenance activities held broadly stable, Assomac said.
Exports remain the sector’s main growth driver, but Italy’s position in global trade has eroded over the past two decades. The country accounted for 27% of global trade in the sector in 2025, confirming its status as the world’s second-largest exporter behind China alone, but down sharply from a 42% share in 2005, according to Assomac’s twenty-year industry report. China reached a 49% share of global exports last year, a gain Bergozza attributed in part to public support for Chinese manufacturers running as high as eight times the OECD average.
The competitive shift extends beyond Assomac’s own segment. Luca Baraldi of sector body Federmacchine told the assembly that China has also overtaken Italy in broader machinery exports, with a 20% global share against Italy’s 8%, and that for a second consecutive year in 2024 and 2025, machinery imported into Italy from China exceeded Italian machinery exported to China, a reversal Baraldi described as an unprecedented structural shift.
Italy remains China’s main global competitor and has held on to leadership in tanning machinery, leather goods machinery and spare parts, with manufacturers concentrating on higher-value luxury and premium segments even as overall volumes decline, Assomac said.
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Bergozza framed the erosion of domestic supply chains, rather than Chinese competition itself, as the more pressing threat. “The problem is not China,” he said. “The problem is that we are hollowing out our own supply chains.” He added that competition today plays out between industrial ecosystems backed by public strategy rather than between individual companies, a dynamic he said calls for investment, consolidation and a sustained international presence rather than a defensive posture.
The association proposed a permanent value chain working group bringing together technology, materials and finished-product representatives across the footwear, leather goods and tanning industries.
“There is no Made in Italy without a supply chain, no supply chain without manufacturing, and no manufacturing without technology,” Bergozza said, underscoring the case for closer coordination.
Assomac pointed to the Vigevano district, a historic hub built on integration between machinery manufacturers and footwear producers, where the ratio between the two categories has now reached eight to one, as concrete evidence of how quickly supply chain links can unravel. The association said the imbalance needs to be addressed before it becomes structurally difficult to reverse.
Strategic priorities identified at the meeting included stronger international engagement, new industrial partnerships, generational continuity within family-run manufacturing firms, trade fair promotion, and organizational and digital transformation. Bergozza also invoked the postwar magazine La Civiltà delle Macchine as a touchstone for a renewed narrative linking technology, industry and culture, in the spirit of Italy’s mid-twentieth-century economic expansion.
The assembly closed with a tribute to Assomac’s longest-standing member companies, a gesture the association said was intended to underline entrepreneurial continuity as a competitive asset in its own right, alongside the broader push for improved competitiveness, innovation and internationalization through deeper supply chain collaboration and more coordinated industrial policy.
The General Assembly, held on June 18 at the Fondazione Cariplo Congress Centre in Milan, brought together entrepreneurs, the heads of allied industry associations and institutional representatives. Assomac, founded in 1982, represents more than 130 Italian manufacturers of machinery, technology and services for the footwear, leather goods and tanning industries, exporting to more than 130 countries worldwide.