StatWatch: Granite Gets December Chill
By Emerson Schwartzkopf
Should the U.S. dimensional-surfaces market be worried about what’s happening to shipments of granite?
December 2015 offered yet another down month for the industry’s key surface, with Brazil and China showing large year-to-year losses in tonnage to U.S. ports of entry.
The half-full argument from the monthly exclusive Stone Update analysis of data from the U.S. International Trade Commission is that the rate of decline in December 2015 isn’t as great as November 2015. The other side of the tale is, well, it’s still a large, double-digit decline.
GRANITE
Chalk it up to excess inventory and the precarious economies of Brazil and China, the two biggest granite partners of the United States, but the overall 26.8% drop in all dimensional granite was a lousy season’s greetings. Brazil led the decline again with its 49,864 MT metric tons (MT) last November marking a change of -37.4% (which at least wasn’t as bad as November’s -49%) from the same time in 2014.
China moved down 32.1% from the previous year to 26,251 MT in December. Italy brought some cheer with an 8.5% gain from December 2014, but the 6,059 MT for the last month of 2015 is a far distance from its U.S. shipments in the early 2000s
Does this portend a slowdown in the countertop market? Given the increases in quartz-slab imports, it’s extremely unlikely that we’re seeing another crash – but, given that the first quarter of any year is slow as far as surface imports, any clear trend up or down won’t be apparent until early summer.
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MARBLE
No wild market swings here for U.S imports; it’s tough to get much duller than movement of less than a percentage point, as with December 2015’s year-to-year change for 0.8% on 36,584 MT.
The remarkable part of December 2015 dimensional-marble imports is that there’s any gain at all, given Turkey’s year-to-year decline of 23.2%. Beefy numbers from India (+82.4%), Greece (113.2%) and, despite its problems in granite, Brazil (126.2%) made up the difference.
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QUARTZ SLABS
December wasn’t the best month for 2015 quartz-slab imports – in fact, it was fifth-best overall – but the six million square-feet received in the United States beat the previous December by 63.3%.
While some parts of the quartz flow remained predictable — China again doubled-up from its December 2014 shipments – a few surprises came at year’s end. Spain punched up its year-to-year totals by close to 50%, while India scored a 81.4% gain and Italy made a huge move up at 213.3%. Vietnam, meanwhile, took a rare stumble, falling 24.4%.
And then there’s the closely watched gains (or losses) from Israel as an indication of Caesarstone’s financial health. In December 2015, the year-to-year numbers went up 18.7%; since company officials recently noted that its Richmond Hill, Ga., plant isn’t quite up to full speed, Caesarstone’s additional imports show that sales are going up.
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TRAVERTINE
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OTHER CALCAREOUS
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OTHER STONE
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