I felt that Cevisama was definitely better attended this year than last, at least by the British contingent, and there were a few more exhibitors but the halls were still very quiet compared to the buzz a couple of years ago and there was a definite lack of innovation and new products to report.
The Spanish are obviously still hurting with production down by 40% and many factories not producing. I’ve been looking at statistics on tile imports and exports, in an effort to gauge how the market is moving and how badly the industry was hit. Imports, which are after all around 80-85% of the market, were down 13% in value from 2007 to 2009. Spanish imports were down 18% from 2007. Italy faired marginally better with a 14% drop whilst Chinese imports saw a 15% increase over the period, taking them to 9% of total imports (up from 6% in 2007). The largest importers were Spain at 36% (down from 38% in 2007) and Italy at 28% (unchanged from 2007).
The export market also plummeted despite the fall in the value of the pound, down 24% over the time period with exports to the original 15 EU countries which make up 75% of UK tile exports down 23% and North American sales (6%) down a whopping 65%.
The information for home produced tiles is not readily available, but Pilkington’s Tiles recently announced sales of ceramic tiles down 3.8% for the 12 months to the end of March 09. Norcros has just said in an interim statement that H&R Johnson saw an increase in revenue of 2-3% in 2009, which is a turnaround from the year to March ‘09, and British Ceramic Tile is said to have seen an increase in sales volume over the same period.
The consensus at Cevisama seemed to be that the market is moving in the right direction although things are still tough out there especially at the lower end. And this is supported by some of the recent press announcements from related companies, such as the H&R Johnson one above and Wolsely Group’s statement that they are expecting better than forecast results, having dumped their Irish operation. Let’s hope that they really do signal the start of the hoped for recovery and that things start to improve for everyone from here on in.
