Italy is Currently the World's Largest Manufacturer of Metal Forming Machine Tools in the World
Even though 2009 was thought to be a global recession, Italian Machine Tool Manufacturers in the metal forming category (bending, forming, punching, shearing, cutting, drilling, etc.) managed to grow their sales over the figures of 2008 which was generally thought to be the best year in recent history. The level of increase, while small (1.1%) when compared to prior years, was still extremely impressive in view of the general negative developments in the machine tool industry and the worldwide recession.
Based upon 2009 sales figures of metal forming machine tools the six largest countries for this period were as follows:
| Italy | 2,677,000,000 Euros |
| Germany | 2,555,000,000 Euros |
| China | 2,381,000,000 Euros |
| Japan | 1,401,000,000 Euros |
| South Korea | 990,000,000 Euros |
| Taiwan | 680,000,000 Euros |