Stone Imports: First-Half Improvements in 2012

September 6, 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.

U.S. $1 =
(Interbank bid)
	30-Jun-11	30-Jun-12	Change	Yr. Aver.
Euro	0.6949	0.795	-12.6%	0.7471
Canada (Can. $)	0.9765	1.0248	-4.7%	1.0032
Brazil (real)	1.5675	2.0764	-24.5%	1.7844
China (yuan)	6.463	6.3089	2.4%	6.3411
India (rupee)	45.3348	56.0542	-19.1%	50.4258
Israel (new shekel)	3.414	3.9355	-13.3%	3.7077
Mexico (peso)	11.7838	13.4696	-12.5%	13.0921
Peru (nuevo sol)	2.747	2.664	3.1%	2.6678
Turkey (new lira)	1.6206	1.8257	-11.2%	1.7916

Source: Oanda Corp.

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%.

Worked Granite Value – First Half
(U.S. dollars)
	2012	2011	Change
Brazil	$227,376,740	$205,653,168	10.6%
China	$117,891,185	$99,905,190	18.0%
India	$80,169,753	$68,869,479	16.4%
Italy	$51,346,429	$56,762,827	-9.5%
Canada	$11,669,524	$11,194,496	4.2%
Taiwan	$9,860,677	$8,972,209	9.9%
Spain	$7,710,603	$5,573,019	38.4%
All Others	$8,551,988	$7,287,950	17.3%
Total	$514,576,899	$464,218,338	10.8%

Source: U.S. International Trade Commission, Stone Update analysis

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.