Italy Factory Automation and Industrial Controls Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The Italy Factory Automation and Industrial Controls Market are expected to witness a CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period (2021-2026). The COVID-19 outbreak has triggered the manufacturing sector in Italy to re-evaluate its conventional production processes, fundamentally driving the digital transformation and factory automation practices across the production lines. The manufacturers are also collectively driven to devise and deploy multiple new and agile approaches to monitor product and quality control.​

Key Highlights

• Italy has small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), most of which are grouped in clusters. These enterprises specialize in high-quality products and lower labor costs, which enable them to withstand competition from upcoming economies. The northern part of the country is mainly industrialized with a network of private companies. Due to the presence of many SMEs, the country has been actively starting initiatives to encourage the adoption of automation solutions among these companies, which are anticipated to drive the demand for factory automation solutions in the country.
• The Northwest region (Milan-Turin-Genoa) is home to large industries as aerospace, naval, machinery, and automotive. The Central and Northeast parts of Italy (which were previously rural areas) have become a region with many small businesses of high craftsmanship, coupled with low technology, specialized in textiles, clothing, footwear, furniture, leather products, jewelry, and furniture, among others.
• Furthermore, the country has been witnessing new initiatives that are mainly focused on encouraging the adoption of Industry 4.0. For instance, New Industry 4.0 tax incentives in 2020. Starting from January 1, 2020, in Italy, the new tax credit for capital goods investments replaced the previous super-amortization and hyper-amortization. The recent amendment proposed by the Ministry of Economic Development introduces many innovations to support companies in their technological and digital transformation process.
• Moreover, recent controller vulnerabilities that attackers have exploited to disrupt operations are on the rise. This challenges the implementation of ICS, as to secure ICS networks, there is usage of different communication protocols. Also, operational technology vendors use their own proprietary implementation of the IEC-61131 standard for programmable logic controllers.

Key Market Trends

Automation is Observing a Significant Increase

• Italy is not commonly known to be at the forefront of the manufacturing sector. However, the government of Italy introduced Industria 4.0 (I4.0) in 2020 and aimed to include strategic guidelines to be implemented in a year. The initiative is focused on transforming traditional manufacturing methods with a focus on skills and advanced technology and supporting the digitization of the Italian economy. It also emphasizes a future based on collaboration with other countries - this driving factory automation in the country.
• In another instance, Comau, industrial automation, and robotics company, support the Milan Competence Center by providing its most innovative products, like the MATE exoskeleton, traditional industrial robots and collaborative robots, the autonomous driving vehicle Agile1500, and thee.DO educational robot. By doing so, Comau aims to support companies in acquiring production processes and tools, enabling the smart factory in an increasingly incisive manner.
• In the past few years, many automakers have automated their plants, and many companies have been identified as tending toward one-stop automation solution providers who can cater to all of their automation needs to gain better returns and efficiency, driving the smart factory market.
• Moreover, the inculcation of industrial control systems in auto manufacturing plants gives companies the ability to keep real-time track of productivity & quality through the data generated through plant connectivity. It may offer mitigating actions to the line supervisors and plant executives. Data analytics can offer a gateway to predicting various outcomes, from the quality of the part being produced to the next machine breakdown.
• Furthermore, with the Italian market posing high potential opportunities for the adoption of automation in the textile industries, various international players see to expand in the country. Jack Sewing Machine Co., a leading Chinese sewing technology provider, acquired Italian jeans automation company ViBeMac SPA in yet another accomplishment.

Robotics is Propelling the Market With Gradual Growth

• The industrial robotics segment consists of articulated robots, cartesian robots, SCARA robots, collaborative industry robots (cobots), parallel robots, piece picking robots, etc. The adoption of industrial robots has been increasing in most end-users and applications as these robots enhance accuracy, flexibility, reduced product damage, speed, and ultimately the efficiency of operations.
• The rapidly growing market for smart production and automation is propelling the use of industrial robotics across the globe. According to a survey by Yokogawa Electric Corporation in 2020, 64% of respondents from companies in process industries pointed out that they are anticipating fully autonomous operations by 2030.
• Also, 89% of the respondents said their companies currently have plans to increase the level of autonomy in their operations. Regarding the current status, 64% of respondents said they are conducting or are piloting semi-autonomous or autonomous operations, while 67% expect significant automation of most decision-making processes in plant operations by 2023.
• There are a lot of innovation practices done in industrial robotics by start-ups as well as established vendors. The focus is on improving the robotic senses of industrial robots, which helps their interaction with the world around them.
• In February 2021, ABB announced its collaborative robot (cobot) portfolio with the GoFa and SWIFTI cobot families, offering higher payloads and speeds to complement YuMi and Single Arm YuMi in ABB’s cobot line-up. GoFa and SWIFTI are designed so that the customers do not need rely on in-house programming specialists. This unlocks industries that have low levels of automation.

Competitive Landscape

The Italy factory automation and industrial control market is moderately consolidated, with the presence of a few major companies. The companies are continuously investing in making strategic partnerships and product developments to gain more market share. Some of the recent developments in the market are:

• May 2021 - Schneider Electric partnered with Roca Group to accelerate decarbonization. Roca Group, a world leader in the design, production, and commercialization of products to define a new roadmap toward decarbonization, has been establishing a single, global strategy across the group.
• May 2021- Rockwell partnered with Cisco Cyber Vision to expand its threat detection services. Cyber Vision provides visibility into industrial control systems to build secure infrastructures. Cyber Vision solution will be to Rockwell’s LifecycleIQ Services portfolio.

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