Italy's crib makers in crisis as births continue to fall

In northern Italy's once thriving industrial district for baby and child products there are now only two manufacturers that remain.

It follows years of falling birth rates and competition from abroad, the combination of which has forced many of the small-scale family-owned businesses to close, reportsReuters.

Bergamo province was home to around a dozen factories in the 1970s and 1980s, producing high chairs, cribs – these are generally smaller and more portable than cots – toys and prams, until the market collapsed as the number of births in Italy shrank by more than a third over the last 20 years.