According to Statistics Portugal's data, in 2017, Portugal exported 83 million pairs of shoes, worth 1.965 million euros, which represents a growth of 2.8% compared to the previous year. “It was an extremely challenging year”, guarantees Luís Onofre, President of APICCAPS.It's a new historic high in terms of external trade. In 2017, the Portuguese footwear has registered the 8th consecutive year of exports growth (over 55%, since 2009). “Persistence, work capacity, enthusiasm, passion and purpose of serving the customer well” are the key aspects of the extremely positive results of the Portuguese footwear in international
markets, in the opinion of Salomé Almeida. For Take a Walk’s Ceo “creativity and boldness have allowed the Portuguese companies to be one step ahead of their competitors”. Mário Marques, from Cubanas, adds “the focused work, the quality and the innovation of the Portuguese footwear” as distinctive elements worldwide.

A world of opportunities
Over the past year, Portugal exported footwear to over 150 countries throughout the five continents. Europe is still the main market, absorbing over 80% of exports. The growth within the European Union represents 2% with a highlight to Germany (over 11% to 375 million euros), the Netherlands (over 4.5% to 281 million euros) and Denmark (over 12.9% to 107 million euros). In contrast, there were negative results in France (drop of 1.5% to 410 million euros), Spain (drop of 6.6% to 174 million euros) and the United Kingdom (drop of 6.1% to 125 million euros).

Outside the European Union, notwithstanding the devaluation of the dollar, the Portuguese exports have increased 7.1%. However, the exports of footwear “made in Portugal” to Canada and USA  decreased to 1.5% to 99 million euros.
Lastly, a very positive appreciation was registered to Russia (over 63% to 33 million euros), Angola (over 6% to 18 million euros) and China (over 3% to 13 million euros).

Growing numbers of jobs and companies
The data from APICCAPS’ Studies Office allows to highlight two other important points: since 2010, the numbers of companies within the footwear industry increased 22.4% to 1534 (approximately 290 new industrial companies were created) and employment increased 24.6% to 40.034 (since 2010, 8.000 jobs were created).