Over nine hundred business concerns from all walks of industry: the main picture that emerges from member firms belonging to the Association of Industrialists reflects the current economic situation of the province. The largest sectors in Modenese industry are its "historical" ones, i.e. the metal and mechanical sector (32.6%) and the textile clothing sector (16.5%). Ceramics firms also make up a solid group accounting for 8.3% of the total, while the food industries hold 8.2%. The services industries are mainly geared towards industry and represent 22.4% of membership. Smallness is another salient feature of Association of Industrialists member firms: 64.7% of them have less than 50 employees and 45.3% have a turnover of less than 10 billion lire.
Looking at the industries, the greatest importance in terms of high turnover is covered by the biomedical sector (33.3% of firms exceed the 100 billion lire mark) followed by the ceramic sector. As for the number of employees, again the record is held by the biomedical sector with 16.6% of firms having more than 500 workers, followed by the ceramic tile manufacturing firms. The reverse of the medal shows that the greatest production fragmentation is to be found in the textile clothing sector, both in terms of turnover (54.2% of firms do not exceed the 10 billion lire mark) and of its workers (totalling less than 50 employees in 81.4% of cases).
A particularly important note comes from the analysis of export capacity: 37% of firms regularly send a third of their invoice total abroad; the most important markets are the European ones, followed by North America and Asia. The sector with the highest export capacity is once again the biomedical one, with an average of more than 51% of it's its turnover. Following this trend we have the ceramic sector with an average of 48.9%, the metal and mechanical sector with 34.2%, the textile sector with 31.3% and the food sector with 19%.