Gardening equipment: the Italian market holding up well

Sales figures for gardening and landscaping equipment indicate a decline in the first half of the year compared to the previous year, but still high volumes. After the boom in the first half of 2021 (+33.7%), the figures for 2022 indicate a drop of 13.6%, which suggests a total number of items sold at the end of the year of around 1,480,000. Variations in the sector's trend may occur - warns the manufacturers' president Renato Cifarelli - as a result of the uncontrolled increase in production costs and therefore in the final price of machinery released on the market

In the first six months of this year, sales of machinery and equipment for gardening and landscaping fell compared to the same period in 2021, although overall volumes remained high. The data - processed by the manufacturers' association Comagarden on the basis of the Morgan statistical sample - indicate a drop in the market of 13.6% over the six months, compared to the impressive growth (+33.7%) that the sector had experienced in the same half of last year. As a matter of fact - Comagarden explains - the drop in sales does not cancel out the previous year's performance, and the volumes of machinery absorbed by the market are still higher than in 2020 and even compared to pre-Covid 2019. Looking at the main types of equipment, smaller declines compared to the overall average were seen for brushcutters (-10.3%), chainsaws (-12.9%), motor hoes (-10.7%) and blowers/aspirators (-0.7%), while larger declines were seen for lawn mowers (-21%), consumer ride-on mowers (-22.1%), professional ride-on mowers (-67%), hedge trimmers (-20.4%) and trimmers (-16.8%). In the lawn mower segment, robots stood out once again, which have been a growing type for years and closed the half-year with a sales volume essentially equal to that of the previous year (-0.2%). Similarly, battery-powered models, which are found within numerous product types, confirmed the positive trend of the last few years and recorded a minimal drop (-1.3%) in the half-year compared to the previous year. The downturn in the market recorded in the first half of the year - explained Renato Cifarelli, President of Comagarden, at a press conference - is partly due to the natural adjustment following last year's boom, and partly to the lack of machinery on the market due to the slowdown in production rates. But it also depends to a large extent on the weather trend, which in the gardening sector is a very influential variable. The long drought and the abnormal heat wave have in fact slowed down the vegetative activity of plants and therefore significantly reduced the demand for maintenance machinery. The weather trend did not change in July, August and September, and therefore it is likely that the market balance at the end of the nine months will still show negative indices. The weather variable, however, is not the only one characterising the sector. The staggering increase in the energy bill - the price of natural gas has risen by 371% and that of Brent crude by 47% - and the higher cost of ferrous and plastic materials, on average up by 20%, are causing production costs to rise beyond all expectations - said Cifarelli - and this inevitably affects the final price of mechanical equipment and therefore the propensity to invest on the part of buyers, moreover in an overall economic context that appears to be very uncertain. As of today, projections for the end of the year indicate a total number of mechanical means and implements estimated at about 1,480,000 units, corresponding to a drop of 10.6% compared to the total in 2021 - Cifarelli concluded - but there are difficult months ahead of us, which require constant monitoring