The index Ismea relating to the confidence climate of the oil industry continues to be positive and substantially in line with that of the agri-food sector as a whole. The good expectations are based on the fact that inventories will still be plentiful thanks to the good combination of inventories and new production. Demand also seems to be holding up and therefore expectations on orders remain good.
In terms of consumption, the complete reopening of theHotels and Restaurants for some months it had already begun to bode well for the manufacturing world which continues to trust in a restart of demand especially for quality products. In fact, Covid-19 could have significantly changed consumer habits by raising the bar of the required quality. Clearly, all this depends on consumers' willingness to pay and, therefore, on the economy's ability to restart in general.
However, the fears also related to the new closures, albeit partial, which we are witnessing, remain. This also applies to foreign demand to which exports are linked which, moreover, are suffering from all the problems related to logistics and the rise in container prices and the difficulty of delivering products especially in some US ports. Added to this is also the increase in costs linked to energy, difficulties in finding glass and other production factors.
