MILAN (ITALPRESS) – A year of lights and shadows for the Italian rubber industry. Giovanni Panico, director of Assogomma, interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the Italpress Economy TV magazine. The association adhering to Confindustria represents 200 enterprises and about 30 thousand employees.
The sector, explains Panico, includes half tires and half technical articles such as pipes, seals, conveyor belts and belts, intended for various compartments. A material sometimes “hidden” but indispensable, often with safety functions.
The association’s joint investigations photograph a split: a third of the companies declare growth turnover, a third stable, a third falling. However, the first positive signals arrive, with the data of the nine months of the production of tires and technical articles in positive territory regarding the end of 2025. The production levels remain below 20-25% compared to the pre-Covid period.
The first half of the year was complicated by energy and raw materials. The industry uses synthetic rubber for half, partly derived from oil, and half natural rubber. Tensions related to the Gulf War have blocked the supply chain for at least a couple of months, with suppliers unable to even quote materials or indicate delivery times. “Now it seems that the situation is stabilizing – Panico observes – but it is too early to say that we went out of the guado.”
On the regulatory front, the category association shares the principles of CBAM, the European mechanism for adapting carbon to borders, but criticises the application. With the new edition of the regulation the steel wire of tyre reinforcement will enter the scheme. According to a study by Tyres Europe, the impact for European producers will be around 70 million euros in only 2028 and will rise up to 140 million a year in 2034. The risk is the boomerang effect: “who produces in Europe already pays ETS and will also pay on raw materials, while the imported finished tyre is not subject to CBAM. It is a model already visible in the rubber pipes reinforced with steel, where the Italian producers undergo the competition of foreign pipes not burdened by the same costs. “We call on the Commission to see more supply chains,” says Panico.
Analyzes the criticism of the protection quotas on steel introduced in July: reduction of 70% of the availability and duties doubled from 25% to 50% to protect a product, the steel wire for hydraulic pipes, which in Europe has only one producer, unable to satisfy the demand. For years more than 60% of the requirement comes from abroad, and the account of new restrictions, warns the manager Panico, pays him who buys.
It also concerns the European tire framework: in the last 18 months EU manufacturers have closed nine plants, with over 4,400 places at risk, and since 2018 they have lost more than 12% of market share. In Italy so far no closure, but Assogomma emphasizes that it serves an energy policy that reduces costs, as well as tools such as the Industrial Accelerator Act, welcomed but still lacunous: for example the spare tyre, three quarters of sales, is not covered. Finally, indispensable controls at frontiers, because compliance costs do not fall only on European firms.
As regards the duties on Chinese tyres for cars, in force since July after over a year of investigation, imports have already moved to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. In the first nine months of the year, imports of low-value generic rubber products rose by 20% in quantity but only by 6% in value. “We need to rethink the instruments – concludes Panico – and make them faster and more effective than the evolution of the real economy.”.
– Photo Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
