CORRECTION: Italian rental market falls 3.5%

We regret that our story in last week's ERARentalWeekly e-newsletter on the rental market in Italy rather overestimated the downturn. Instead of a 35% fall in rental turnover in the first nine months of the year the actual fall was a far less alarming 3.5%.

The error was the result of a misunderstanding during an interview at the SAIE exhibition. Our apologies to Franco de Michelis, Assodimi's director general, who was quoted as the source in the original story. The corrected story is as follows:

The Italian rental market has declined on average by around 3.5% this year so far, according to the most recent market survey by rental and distributors association Assodimi.

Assodimi's director general, Franco de Michelis, told IRN that there was wide variation in the performance of different rental sectors, with earthmoving and tower crane rental specialists the worst impacted by the recession, and access, scaffolding and power renters performing much better with stable or even some growth in revenues.

"There are companies still doing well in rental", said Mr de Michelis, who said that some of the rental operations closely associated with dealer organisations were suffering because of their relatively narrow product ranges. Komatsu dealers, Cat dealer CGT and other prominent dealers such as MAIE all rent equipment in Italy.

"For the earthmoving sector, recovery will be very difficult", said Mr de Michelis, "First to recover will be the general tool sector." He said his view was that the recession would also provide a longer term boost to rental, with contractors more likely to rent than buy equipment when demand increases.