U.S. Surface Imports: Anchored at the Top?

By Emerson Schwartzkopf

At mid-point, 2015 looks like one of the best years for dimensional-surface imports … but it’s anything but hot for product at the top of the pile.

250 importsShipments of worked granite in January-June this year barely kept pace with the same time in 2014 Two major sources – Brazil and China – didn’t match last year’s totals, dragging down overall growth to less than 2%.

Granite’s slab-dragging pace contrasts with worked marble and quartz slabs. The 214,339 metric tons of marble arriving in U.S. ports-of-entry through the end of June is easily an all-time record, far surpassing the go-go years before the Great Recession. Quartz, meanwhile, continues its torrid annual growth of more than 50%, although the main contributor – China – isn’t going to play the closed-channel game of the industry’s major players.

Instead of writing at length about the numbers at mid-year, we’ll state the numbers themselves; the following charts show the 15 top exporters to the United States in each category. Most measure volume shipped in metric tons, except for quartz surfaces (which are tallied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in square meters, and converted by Stone Update into square feet) and slate (where dollar value offers the only consistent data)

One other note: “N/A” shows that a country didn’t appear in 2014 among the top 15 exporters to the United States in that particular category.


GRANITE

Worked granite – cut, one-side polished, ready for fabrication or installation – is the largest category, with an import growth rate in the early- and mid-2000s that drove the U.S. dimensional trade. The shipments started to decline in 2007 and tanked at decade’s end.

Mid-2015 showed a continued revival, with 883,508 metric tons arriving in the United States. However, that’s only 1.8% better than mid-2014. Of granite’s Big Three, two – Brazil and China – fell behind last year’s pace; to be fair, China did manage to pick up year-to-year growth in 2015’s second quarter.

The 2015 overall granite total represent a long, and successful, journey back from the bottom of 502,871 metric tons in mid-year 2009. The all-time January-June record came in 2006 with 1,206,957 metric tons.

U.S. Worked Granite Imports    
(metric tons)        
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
Brazil 168,094 249,765 417,859 -9.7%
China 86,861 131,022 217,883 -4.5%
India 62,531 81,882 144,413 38.9%
Italy 15,063 18,880 33,943 -5.1%
Canada 4,380 24,694 29,074 50.9%
Spain 7,458 13,297 20,755 5.2%
Taiwan 5,544 1,396 6,940 39.7%
Saudi Arabia 585 1,181 1,766 -32.9%
South Africa 470 848 1,318 -20.7%
Portugal 385 361 746 N/A
Argentina 89 204 293 -62.9%
Hong Kong 49 171 220 27.9%
Korea 90 95 185 77.9%
Indonesia 25 138 163 N/A
France 21 88 109 -4.4%
All Others 7,215 626 7,841 343.2%
Total 358,860 524,648 883,508 1.1%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis    

MARBLE

All those trendy articles and blogs about marble’s new popularity seem to bear out the tremendous rise in U.S. worked-marble imports, as the 214,339 metric tons registered in 2015’s first half whips 2014’s by 58.6%. This year’s shipments also blow away the previous first-half record of 142,038 metric tons, set in 2007.

Are this year’s numbers too good to last? Much of the major growth recently comes from Turkey, which moved from a second-tier supplier in 2012 to today’s leading U.S. marble source. Its recent growth pace, including a second-quarter year-to-year rocket rate of 292.3%, will be hard to match through the rest of this year.

U.S. Worked Marble Imports    
(metric tons)      
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
Turkey 22,638 44,210 66,848 200.0%
Italy 22,427 31,397 53,824 15.1%
China 20,277 28,247 48,524 67.9%
India 5,713 5,975 11,688 99.5%
Spain 4,747 6,904 11,651 -8.9%
Brazil 2,891 5,544 8,435 47.4%
Greece 1,579 3,322 4,901 55.4%
Egypt 991 1,272 2,263 -12.2%
Israel 466 595 1,061 -13.7%
Portugal 476 416 892 34.1%
Mexico 101 637 738 -26.5%
Morocco 39 437 476 N/A
France 205 240 445 N/A
Vietnam 226 190 416 N/A
Pakistan 150 230 380 -25.3%
All Others 839 958 1,797 -16.1%
Total 83,765 130,574 214,339 58.9%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis  

QUARTZ SURFACES

Like worked marble, quartz-surfaces imports kept at a torrid speed in this year’s first half, setting yet another record with 30.1 million ft² arriving in the United States. At a pace that’s 51.2% ahead of 2014, is there any need to be worried.

Worried, no. Concerned … oh yeah, even if you’re a fabricator that’s sworn to give the eternal evil eye to the product. Some of the ill-feeling about quartz surfaces among the natural-stone crowd came from overaggressive claims and dubious science (The “R” Word), but the product’s manufacturers held varying degrees of tight control on branding, distribution and use.

Take a look at first-half 2015 totals, and there are two countries synonymous with product channel guidance (Israel and Spain) supplying 12.3 million ft² of quartz surfaces and growth rates from 2014 of 14% or so for each. Now, add the three largest supplier countries with 2015 half-year growth rates of greater than 100% — China, Vietnam and India – and they control 12 million ft² of imports without dealing with a lot of branding, captive shops and territories.

In other words, quartz isn’t only at the home center and designer studio across the city. It’s arriving at the fabricator down the street, and more is on the way.

 

U.S. Quartz Slab Imports      
(square feet)      
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
China 3,403,545 4,729,722 8,133,267 117.1%
Israel 3,517,051 3,098,152 6,615,202 14.3%
Spain 2,215,921 3,511,410 5,727,331 14.4%
Canada 1,213,533 1,432,094 2,645,627 16.3%
Vietnam 1,182,285 1,310,839 2,493,124 119.6%
India 463,741 926,578 1,390,319 219.7%
Italy 387,931 445,055 832,986 69.7%
Portugal 279,883 515,300 795,183 142.0%
Korea 265,868 390,062 655,931 73.7%
Turkey 24,122 243,415 267,537 1,020.1%
Germany 143,644 111,729 255,374 N/A
Czech Republic 75,756 151,061 226,817 163.1%
Brazil 12,400 24,649 37,049 -14.4%
Hong Kong 3,541 20,042 23,584 7.7%
Belgium 7,341 16,361 23,702 -78.9%
All Others 29,913 23,455 53,367 -40.4%
Total 13,226,476 16,949,924 30,176,400 51.2%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis    

TRAVERTINE

U.S. Travertine Imports    
(metric tons)      
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
Turkey 146,368 156,225 302,593 24.6%
Mexico 23,865 15,337 39,202 28.3%
China 2,572 3,947 6,519 46.2%
Italy 2,613 3,032 5,645 -47.5%
Peru 1,752 1,993 3,745 -24.3%
Portugal 0 200 200 102.0%
Dominican Rep 30 115 145 -56.3%
Spain 204 69 273 -56.5%
Israel 18 53 71 -46.6%
Korea 0 48 48 N/A
Morocco 0 44 44 N/A
Chile 80 41 121 N/A
Brazil 22 38 60 N/A
India 83 36 119 -6.3%
France 35 29 64 -36.0%
All Others 694 81 775 55.6%
Total 178,336 181,288 359,624 21.6%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis  

OTHER CALCAREOUS

U.S. Other Calcareous Imports    
(metric tons)      
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
China 10,636 8,555 19,191 46.1%
Italy 5,092 4,220 9,312 -37.7%
Canada 1,812 5,956 7,768 -48.1%
Portugal 3,104 3,868 6,972 0.6%
Turkey 2,879 3,040 5,919 -14.6%
France 3,921 1,088 5,009 -15.3%
Dominican Rep 2,652 1,790 4,442 19.7%
Spain 1,390 2,002 3,392 -78.4%
Mexico 1,200 1,269 2,469 5.2%
Philippines 436 1,352 1,788 62.4%
India 676 832 1,508 110.9%
Israel 664 843 1,507 19.9%
Syria 341 584 925 20.4%
Egypt 432 425 857 N/A
Germany 275 526 801 -32.7%
All Others 3,033 1,612 4,645 -18.3%
Total 38,543 37,962 76,505 -10.4%

OTHER STONE

U.S. Other Stone Imports    
(metric tons)      
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
Brazil 17,910 28,814 46,724 -7.1%
India 16,225 20,386 36,611 -12.7%
China 12,711 14,286 26,997 26.1%
Canada 2,971 4,407 7,378 -8.9%
Italy 3,157 3,552 6,709 12.7%
Mexico 1,413 1,968 3,381 25.7%
South Africa 464 1,524 1,988 176.1%
Dominican Rep 864 958 1,822 227.1%
Bulgaria 574 670 1,244 -3.0%
Spain 548 590 1,138 201.1%
Indonesia 569 500 1,069 39.6%
Taiwan 210 166 376 -45.6%
Peru 113 246 359 N/A
Argentina 78 167 245 52.2%
Hong Kong 138 148 286 N/A
All Others 1,117 937 2,054 -10.0%
Total 58,083 78,530 136,613 -4.4%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis  

SLATE

U.S. Slate Imports      
(U.S. dollars)        
  Q1 2015 Q2 2015 First Half 2015 Change H1 2014
China $7,869,335 $9,407,999 $17,277,334 22.5%
India $3,300,689 $4,208,179 $7,508,868 1.9%
Brazil $1,146,235 $1,489,499 $2,635,734 -7.9%
United Kingdom $648,850 $582,326 $1,231,176 36.0%
Italy $339,844 $359,431 $699,275 35.5%
Spain $29,084 $340,328 $369,412 -24.8%
Canada $150,149 $253,138 $403,287 7.8%
Portugal $48,881 $176,308 $225,189 9.6%
Bulgaria $98,215 $127,063 $225,278 473.8%
Israel $13,031 $100,400 $113,431 N/A
Germany $19,795 $96,227 $116,022 N/A
France $54,825 $88,446 $143,271 -8.0%
Vietnam $14,330 $35,296 $49,626 -7.6%
Indonesia $17,831 $26,167 $43,998 N/A
Montenegro $0 $17,613 $17,613 N/A
All Others $138,388 $48,498 $186,886 56.9%
Total $13,889,482 $17,356,918 $31,246,400 14.6%
Source: USITC; Stone Update analysis    

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