Acimall, the Italian Woodworking Machinery and Tool Manufacturers’ Association, will be participating at the WoodWorking Middle East exhibition, scheduled for January 22-24 at Expo Centre Sharjah.

The association has over 210 companies as members and represents 90 per cent of the Italian Woodworking Machinery and Tools Manufacturing industry. It is actively involved in Federmacchine – the federation that brings together 11 national associations representing as many branches of the machine tools industry – and in Eumabois, the European federation comprising representativs of 12 national associations and in which it serves as the secretariat.
 “The aim of Acimall is to promote the knowledge of Italian technology throughout the world and also to provide member companies with qualified support concerning the main corporate issues,” said Ing Dario Corbetta, its marketing manager in a press statement.
“Acimall is an authoritative and qualified partner for the national and international institutions that deal with the  woodworking machinery industry,” he said.
In 2004, the Italian WoodWorking Machinery and Tool Manufacturing industry included 300 companies with 12,000 employees and had a total turnover of 1.58 million Euros. Over 80  per cent of it was attributed to exports.
The Italian industry of woodworking machinery is one of the most advanced in the world. It has a 27 per cent share of the world market with total exports of over 1.1 billion Euros, placing Italy in the second place after Germany.
“The prospects for development of this sector in the Middle East, particularly the UAE, are very bright given the construction boom that the region is currently experiencing,” said Corbetta.
“The range of machinery offered by the Italian woodworking industry is the largest in the world. It is not restricted to the phases of the initial working of timber, but also covers more complex production systems like optimising exploitation of timber through tomographic analysis of material to be cut, numerically controlled integrated machinery for manufacture of finished products, and advanced adhesive technologies to final varnishing and treating systems. This is a complete system of products, processes and instruments, that would be able to fulfill the needs of the growing Middle East WoodWorking industry,” he said.
In 2004, the value of production in the Italian wood industry exceeded 38.1 billion Euros, with a 32.4 per cent export share. The lion’s share in it was that of furniture with 22.8 billion Euro with 47.9 per cent attributed to exports.
The Italian wood and furniture industry comprises 83,000 companies with 412,000 employees, of which 36,000 companies with 233,000 employees are in the furniture industry.