U.S. Stone Imports 2011: A Little Bit Better

March 7, 2012

TRAVERTINE

There’s one U.S. stone sector – travertine – almost wholly dependent one country: Turkey. In 2011, Turkey fed more travertine into exports, further improving travertine’s position.

Travertine Value
	2011	2010	Change
Turkey	$181,900,027	$161,294,034	12.8%
Mexico	$48,989,756	$46,676,963	5.0%
Italy	$11,595,002	$12,237,437	-5.2%
China	$11,244,793	$11,520,715	-2.4%
Peru	$9,784,184	$10,530,672	-7.1%
All Others	$5,559,226	$5,085,938	9.3%
Total	$269,072,988	$247,345,759	8.8%

The surprise may be that Turkey’s 12.8% gain in travertine import values didn’t translate into a double-digit rise for overall travertine-import valuation. In what seems to be a price battle, China and Peru lost out with drops in import values; so does Italy, but it’s not for cutting valuations at the dock.

Travertine Volume (metric tons)
	2011	2010	Change
Turkey	382,555	347,150	10.20%
Mexico	64,716	61,927	4.50%
China	20,117	15,938	26.22%
Peru	17,691	12,285	44.00%
Italy	7,650	9,744	-21.49%
All Others	12,386	10,566	17.23%
Total	505,115	457,610	10.38%

China and Peru clearly put the premium on volume, cutting valuation while increasing tonnage. Italy – never a place to slash prices to gain market share – shipped far less. And Turkey dominated the market to the point that the overall rise in volume came with two-tenths of its own growth rate.

Last year still ranked far below the all-time volume record of 962,491 metric tons, set in 2006. But 2011’s travertine total also remains almost double the amount imported in 2000.

OTHER CALCAREOUS

The end of 2011 finally allows the wrap-up of the importing country that ran away – Lebanon – and how it thoroughly jumbled the market for other calcareous. It also shows how another country managed to skew this year’s totals.

Other Calcareous Value
	2011	2010	Change
China	$13,776,058	$10,858,555	26.9%
Italy	$12,268,952	$15,887,787	-22.8%
Portugal	$11,482,176	$9,889,157	16.1%
France	$8,046,533	$6,368,401	26.4%
Spain	$7,584,786	$7,573,926	0.1%
Mexico	$7,225,235	$6,381,219	13.2%
Turkey	$5,862,930	$6,364,834	-7.9%
Israel	$5,357,577	$4,844,775	10.6%
All Others	$17,565,868	$22,666,413	-22.5%
Total	$89,170,115	$90,835,067	-1.8%

For a few years, Lebanon dominated U.S. imports of other calcareous in the same way Turkey leads the imported travertine market. Then, after May 2010, Lebanon quit exporting to the United States, and nobody else picked up the slack. Lebanese exports of other calcareous were valued at level so low it bordered on the ridiculous – down to one-fifth of the average from all other countries – so the pullout didn’t make much of a dent in 2010. (The 1.8% decline in 2011 comes mainly from a slowdown in higher-priced Italian exports.)

Lebanon’s abandonment of the U.S. market accounts for a large part of the massive decline in other calcareous tonnage for 2011:

Other Calcareous Volume (metric tons)
	2011	2010	Change
Mexico	38,330	5,819	558.7%
China	17,084	11,286	51.4%
Portugal	9,896	9,958	-0.6%
Italy	7,872	11,130	-29.3%
Spain	7,566	17,749	-57.4%
Canada	6,528	5,075	28.6%
France	5,995	7,280	-17.7%
Turkey	5,906	19,916	-70.3%
All Others	28,566	260,071	-89.0%
Total	127,743	348,284	-63.3%

Once again, this stone sector is a mess, although it’s not Lebanon’s fault last year. The numbers would be worse, save for a massive infusion of Mexican stone into U.S. ports-of-entry. The country went from 347 metric tons in January to 9,814 in February; through July, Mexico’s shipments of other calcareous shot to 35,875 metric tons, or 93.6% of its 2011 total. From August on, it didn’t ship more than 500 metric tons a month on average.