TRIESTE – In 2025, exports from Friuli Venezia Giulia exceeded 20 billion euros, up 17.8% on the previous year, above all thanks to shipbuilding.
The figure emerges from an Ires Fvg processing of Istat statistics and places the region second in Italy for export growth, behind only Tuscany (+21.3%). At national level, the average increase was 3.3%, while in north-eastern Italy it stopped at +2%.
According to Ires Fvg researcher Alessandro Russo, the regional result is largely linked to the performance of the shipbuilding industry, a sector marked by strong fluctuations over time. In 2024, exports of ships and boats had only slightly exceeded one billion euros, while in 2025 they rose above 3.7 billion, with an increase of 244%. Even excluding this sector, regional export growth would still remain positive, at +2.7%.
From a territorial point of view, the expansion of shipbuilding is reflected entirely in the province of Trieste, which posted a 91.5% increase in exports. Udine and Gorizia recorded figures broadly stable compared with 2024, while Pordenone showed growth of 6.4%. As for destination markets, there was a strong expansion in flows towards Germany (+52.5%), the United States (+45.1%) and Indonesia (+2,635%), in all three cases linked to shipbuilding and therefore to the home country of the shipowners. Among the main trading partners, the only significant decline concerned Poland (-9.6%), due above all to the metallurgical sector.
On the US market, some regional sectors nonetheless recorded a fall in exports: machinery and equipment (-6.7%), furniture (-14.5%) and beverages (-4.8%), a category that also includes wine. Food products, on the other hand, showed a positive change compared with 2024 (+3.9%), despite the tariffs in place.
The Ires analysis also highlights a significant statistical revision by Istat to the 2024 figure. The value of regional exports for that year was reduced from 19 to 17.2 billion euros, following the reallocation of part of shipbuilding exports to the correct region of production. According to the same source, the 365 million euros of ship and boat exports to Indonesia recorded in 2025 may also have been wrongly attributed to the province of Trieste and could therefore be subject to a future statistical revision. Even without this figure, however, the trend in exports from the shipbuilding sector would remain strongly positive.
