"Despite the situation, right now we are trying to make some investments to acquire new work and be ready for recovery. Ours is a small company and we have always worked with similar businesses, often emerging brands that we are able to follow in the startup. At this stage, not working with brand names has allowed us to contain the damage: compared to companies that have lost 40-60 percent of their turnover, we have recorded a drop that is around 20 percent."
The analysis of the managers of Litografia Eurograf in Sant'Elpidio a Mare (FM), in the heart of the Marche's footwear district, is lucid. "I do not expect a recovery in the short term," they continue, "we will have to wait until the beginning of 2025. In our industry, volume counts, and volume right now is not there. In 2023, compared to 2019, our turnover grew by 30 percent, but we printed maybe half of the previous year. The turnover figure is distorted by the increase in the cost of raw materials: at the turn of 2022-2023 there was also +30-50% of turnover compared to 2020/2022, but if we include the variable of the cost of paper, which increased by up to 300%, profits have anything but grown. It is a complex phase for the small ones."
A downturn due to a multiplicity of factors. "It does not depend on the individual, it is the overall context that is complex," they conclude, "until the mortgage situation and the war situation are unblocked, it will not be possible to raise our heads again. However, it would be necessary for politics to move at the European level to protect the small ones, for example through maneuvers that discourage the purchase of raw materials from China and encourage a return to domestic production, but also that stimulate generational change: out of four printing companies in the area, I am the only one who has jumped in and taken over the business."
