2016 Surface Imports: Down at the Half

By Emerson Schwartzkopf

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Most natural-stone imports in 2016 are lagging behind 2015 totals.

For the first six months of this year, imports of worked (sawn and polished) granite is down 9.5%. Marble shipments are down 6.7%, and travertine imports are off almost 30%.

Don’t start thinking about diving out the nearest window, though. For most sectors, one or two countries are slanting the averages due to a few weak months this year or crazy-high monthly shipments in 2015. And, these January-June counts still aren’t including the major summer months of the U.S. building season.

Quartz, meanwhile, steams along with import year-to-year growth of more than 27% for the first six months of the year. Whether the curve stays as steep depends mainly on China, where shipments are more than 80% higher than last year’s first half.

WORKED GRANITE

There’s a 9.5% overall decline in U.S. worked-granite imports in the first half of this year. Should the industry be scared?

Scared. No. Worried? Some. Watchful? Most definitely.

Unfortunately, granite’s Big Three – Brazil, China and India – all show declines from 2015 in this year’s first half, from China’s -2.1% to India’s -21%. Brazil, the majority export country to the United States, is in the middle at -7.1% — but, given Brazil’s 48% share of granite imports so far this year, that’s a pivotal number.

Shipments aren’t tanking at the rate of the late 2000s as the economy fell into recession. Some of this year’s decline comes from short-term bursts in the past of increased exports from some countries, such as China doubling its totals for one month only in 2015 (June), and Canada reaching abnormal highs in cross-border shipments in last year’s second and third quarters.

There’s still demand for granite, but don’t expect a huge rise in mid- and late-summer numbers as the building season peaks. Taking a peek around the corner on the export-data calendar, this July’s data is moribund at best, with Brazil still lagging behind the same time in 2015 by 8.2%, and lower shipments again from China and Canada.

WORKED MARBLE

Given all the push for the marble look, the 6.7% decrease in U.S. worked-marble imports seems surprising … although, as with granite, 2016 performance gets some undue shade from extraordinary shipments in 2015.

With marble, it’s in marble exports from Turkey. (And, that’s only marble, since travertine – usually lumped in the marble totals with most nations, is counted separately by U.S. Customs.) Beginning in April 2015, Turkey shipped more than 10,000 metric tons per month here for six straight months, and topped 20,000 metric tons for two. Since then, it’s only topped that 10K level once (June 2016).

The result is that Turkey’s 39,633 metric tons for the first half of this year is down 40.7%; Italy’s leading total of 57,062 metric tons is up 6.0%, and China’s 46,268 metric tons is down 4.5%. While Spain dropped 15.7% in 1H 2016, others picked up the slack, including India (20,363 metric tons, up 73.9%) and Brazil (13,214 metric tons, up 55.5%).

QUARTZ SURFACES

While the growth curve may be a bit less steep in 2016, the 38,628,838 ft² of quartz surfaces entering the United States from January-June marks a more-than-healthy 27.6% gain from 2015. Fueling the still-ferocious rise is China, moving slightly more than 15 million ft² in this year’s first half to top the same time last year by an amazing 84.3%.

Spain’s second-place total of just under 7.2 million ft² is none-too-shabby with a 25.6% rise from first-half 2015. Israel takes third with 4.5 million ft² with a 30.9% drop from last January-June; with recent reports from Caesarstone showing strong U.S. sales, however, the decline may result more from better efficiency at the Israeli manufacturer’s factory in Richmond Hill, Ga.

The rest of the seven countries shipping more than one million square feet of quartz surfaces to the United States in this year’s first half show good gains, with an eighth just missing the mark: Turkey, with 955,275 ft² (and up 207.5% from the same time in 2015).

TRAVERTINE

Nobody dominates a stone sector like Turkey tops the U.S. travertine market; in the first half of this year, the country provided 73.9% of travertine entering this country.

So, when Turkey’s shipments fall off, travertine import numbers take a tumble. Overall travertine imports in first-half 2016 of 239,745 metric tons fell 29.5% from the same time last year – with Turkey’s 177,211 metric tons marking a 39.2% decrease.

It wasn’t all bad, as a strong May and June helped propel Mexico to 44,466 metric tons for this year’s first six months, up 43.8%, and Italy jumped 13.6% with 6,414 metric tons. China, meanwhile, barely kept pace with last year, with 6,597 metric tons barely moving the needle with 1.2% growth.