Italy: Espresso Machines Continue to Build up Head of Steam at Christmas

In 2009, the Espresso machines market represented the most dynamic product family of the cooking area in the small domestic appliances sector.

Although Espresso machines continue to have a positive performance in terms of volume (+4%), in value terms the market is flat (0%), representing a slowdown compared to the strong growth of previous years.

The negative development of traditional and full automatic segments, which have shown a double digit decrease for 2009 (-20% value, -15% volume on Year End 2009), has been offset by the important progress of the portioned system; the ‘open’ system rose 13%, while the ‘closed’ system increased 18% in value terms, sustaining the final market results.

The Christmas period represents the most important season for the Italian coffee machines industry: a third of annual sales volume was realised during Nov-Dec 2009, with the significance of the portioned closed segment (45% of annual sales) increasing.