Stone Imports: First-Half Improvements in 2012
For the first half of this year, U.S. stone imports remain in recovery mode – improving, looking better, but not quite fully robust.
This isn’t bad news; no sector is suffering a steep drop-off, and the general mood is upbeat. In a few areas – granite being the largest – conditions are a bit tentative.
Diagnosis by the numbers won’t reveal all the nuances of the U.S. stone industry, but the import tally offers a good overall look. With 80%-93% of U.S. dimensional-stone use involving materials coming from beyond the borders, it’s a way to spot possible trends in usage and pricing.
Monthly data for U.S. stone trade is collected from several sources and distributed through the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) on a 40-day delay. The last of the numbers to consider this year’s first half came out in mid-August.
DOES MONEY MATTER?
As with recent market reviews, this six-month analysis will be long on charts and short on words. Number-laden paragraphs can be tough reading, and verbiage can get in the way of making a good point.
Before getting to import performance of different stones, though, it’s worth noting that nearly all of them are measured in two ways when arriving in the United States: value and volume. The latter is well-defined in metric tonnage, but the former offers a problem when it comes to international trade.
The strengths of individual currencies can offer import paradoxes, as when a country ships more material by volume, but sees values fall when converted to U.S. dollars. When assessing U.S. industry health, it’s probably better to focus on volume – if material demand increases, people are buying more stone – but lower margins for exporters could also affect supply.
As seen in the last few years, even governments and major corporations haven’t done a bang-up job in interpreting international finance. Instead of offering our own guesses, here’s a chart showing how the stronger U.S. dollar affected other currencies of note in the stone trade.
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GRANITE
The good news: Customs values on “worked” (slab/tile) granite entering the United States continue to improve, with first-half totals this year besting 2011 levels by 10.8%.
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While this looks like a continuation of growth from first-quarter 2012 (when year-to-year values grew by 11.8%), there’s a bit of roughness in this year’s second quarter. The April-June performance received a big boost from China, which reversed a downslide from earlier this year and grew 23.3% in the second quarter. Sector leader Brazil and third-place India slow the increases into single-digit territory in second-quarter, while Italy continues to fall behind last year’s levels.
