Portugal’s footwear industry makes Top 20 world producers list

Portugal had made the Top 20 list of world footwear manufacturers for 2019 according to the World Footwear Yearbook 2020.

It returned to the Top 20 list of largest producers worldwide in 20th position after Egypt did not make the Top 20 list last year.
Nevertheless, world footwear production slowed in 2019, growing just 0.6%, compared with the 2.2% average growth rate in production between 2010 and 2018.
Even so, a new record was set: 24.3Bn pairs of shoes were produced worldwide in 2019. Nine out of every 10 pairs of shoes were produced in Asia, which has strengthened its domination of the international footwear industry by 1.2 per percentage points to 87.4%.
The data was released by the Portuguese Footwear Association (APICCAPS) which revealed that over the last 10 years world production grew 21.2% while global exports increased 10.6% in volume and 51.9% in value.
The record of 24.3Bn pairs of shoes in 2019 should continue for some years given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In April, a survey involving around a 100 manufacturers in 43 countries suggested a reduction in world consumption of around 22.5% this year, which means a reduction in shoe sales of 5.1Bn worldwide.
Portuguese footwear exports hit a high in 2017 with sales of €1.965Bn. Last year had fallen back to €1.7Bn.
The Portuguese footwear industry produced 76 million pairs of shoes, most of them for export, which puts it at 19th place on the list of the biggest footwear exporters (per volume). China, Vietnam and Indonesia led the way, but Europe lost market share to the Far East.
Belgium fell from 5th place to 7th to be overtaken by India and Turkey. Spain fell off the Top 10 spot to be replaced by Cambodia.
Germany occupies 4th place, Italy 8th although are in the Top 3 in terms of value per pair of shoe with US$11,497 million worth exported in 2019.
Portugal, on the other hand, fell two places in the ranking to 15th place in terms of export value of average shoe price.
This fall was because national exports fell 5.7% in 2019. The average price per pair of Portuguese footwear was US$26.26, almost 2% less than the previous year.