The director general of Assomac, the industry body for Italian leather and footwear manufacturers, Agostino Apolito, has called on luxury goods brands to support the organisation’s member companies. By Leatherbiz.

Mr Apolito (pictured) said it was one problem for rivals in Asia to reproduce machinery from Italy, but a more serious one for luxury product manufacturers to be won over by these rivals’ lower costs.

“It seriously harms Assomac member companies for rivals in Asia to reproduce, to use a more elegant word than ‘copy’, our machines,” Mr Apolito said. “But it is even more serious for luxury brands to turn their backs on Italian machinery because of the lower costs of non-European products.”

He said Assomac hoped to work with other industry organisations, with the Italian government and with the European Union authorities to stand up against this, but insisted that Assomac was prepared to fight the battle on its own if it has to.