The October 2026 report of the Fedespedi Study Center shows a Italian foreign trade in recovery, stagnant air cargo and a maritime transport in which the Middle East crisis is returning to weigh on freight rates and routes. While a year ago the Economic Outlook of Fedespedi described a relaxing maritime market, with freight rates decreasing, ships more punctual, volumes growing, the last tells another story, starting with the freight rates that have risen since the low of a year ago to more than double the value. The recovery of hostility between the United States and Iran and the extension of the conflict to Yemen, where the Houthis have recently conquered large portions of the Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb area before being countered by the offensive of government forces, has slowed down the return to normality on maritime routes between Asia and Europe.

The report provides a snapshot of the trend in the port period Italians, but only a part: there are nine of them surveyed by Fedespedi. And here we could open a debate on the scarcity, for not to say largely insufficient, timeliness with which they are Official data on traffic handled by ports released national. A serious fact for a nation that declares itself seafaring. In the first half of this year, the ports surveyed handled containerized traffic of 3.02 million TEUs, down by -0.2% over the same period in 2025, with Genoa at -1.5%, Savona at -8.0%, Trieste at -4.1%, La Spezia at +3.5%, Venice at +4.6%, Ancona at +3,0%. This is a recovery compared to -4.6% in the first quarter 2026 reported by the previous report of the Fedespedi Study Center, which, however, refers to an area of ports partially different.

The most interesting fact, however, is in the comparison between the two maritime macro-slopes in which it is divided the Italian peninsula. The latest report underlines the "greater dynamism" of the North Adriatic, which in the half-year growth of +8% (1.855 million TEUs against 1.718 in the first half of 2025), while the North Tyrrhenian Sea fell by -0.9%. But the North Adriatic group includes Koper and Rijeka. Adding up the only Italian Adriatic ports (Trieste, Venice, Ravenna, Ancona) on traffic is about 819 thousand TEUs in both semesters: So zero growth. Therefore all the increase comes from the two airports Slovenian and Croatian dockers, which grew together by about +15%. The Fedespedi report explains it with the investments of the companies and with the demand of Eastern Europe: "the strong increase in handling in the port of Rijeka-Rijeka (+35.7% Rijeka and +5.2% Koper, ed.) - explains the document - is due to the full operation of the new Rijeka terminal Gateway, managed by APM Terminals (Maersk group) together with Enna Logic (part of the Enna Group, a Croatian investment company, focused on the energy and logistics sectors). The new terminal joins the Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT), already present in the port and managed by the company Luka Rijeka'. The report also shows that in the decade 2015-2025 containerized traffic, on a 2015=100 basis it rose for the North Adriatic to 138 and for the Tyrrhenian to 116. It is confirmation that the competition for the European hinterland is he plays more and more outside the Italian borders.

The report then specifies that "the main ports of the Mediterranean non-Italians handled a total of 24,882 million TEUs, with a growth of 4.7%".

The report also points out that in the first half of 2026, Italian exports rose to 337.2 billion euros (+4.5%), imports at 312.6 (+4.3%), with a surplus of 24.6 billion against 22.8. This is a clear acceleration compared to +1.3% in the first quarter (from the cumulative data a second quarter is obtained 2026 around +7.7%). A significant part of this growth is but from a single voice, that of precious metals and semi-finished products, exported for 13.7 billion against 5.3 (+157%). From alone account for about 57% of the overall increase in exports; without them, growth would be around +2%. The +39% of exports to Switzerland, one of the world's gold hubs (In the period, the other typical destinations of gold did not grow: United Kingdom -5.8%; Turkey -15.5%; Emirates -12.6%). Even the Precious metals imports rose by +87%.

The report also focuses on air cargo, which at the The world has been growing steadily for the past year at around +4% (IATA: +4.1% in August 2025, +4.3% in December, +4.0% in April 2026, +3.9% in July), a far cry from the +13.6% of July 2024. Airports Italians do not follow him. After +15.0% in 2024, +1.7% in 2025 and -1.0% in January-April, for national airports the January-August 2026 period closes at -0.7% (821 thousand tons). The decline is all in postal traffic (-18.6%), which the report attributes, as a probable consequence, to the decline in of e-commerce after the new tax of two euros on packages from the China.

Overall, the picture drawn by the Fedespedi report is therefore that of an Italian economy that returns to growth in the foreign trade, but in which logistics does not follow everywhere the same dynamic. What emerges is a geography of trafficking in which international demand offers new opportunities, but the ability of Italian airports to intercept them does not appear to be uniform. And it is precisely the comparison with the competing ports of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe shows that the It is not only on the growth of traffic, but on the capacity to turn the recovery of trade into market shares logistics.