Suppliers to the furniture sector from the particleboard and laminate panel industry can look back on a good financial year. Overall the German industry achieved an increase in turnover of approx. 8.5 percent, ZOW Advisory Board Member Matthias Hoffmann stated today. He pointed out however that the number of businesses has shrunk by four percent.
A cause for concern is the trend in raw material prices, Hoffman added. The particleboard industry in particular has had to withstand significant cost increases: energy up 22 percent, binding agents up 16 percent, wood up 37 percent, and chips are up by a huge 97 percent. Production quantities stood at approx. 8.2 million m³, which is an increase of around two percent, with imported particle boards seeing an increase of around 16 percent.
Developments in the laminated panel industry with regard to the area of raw materials were as follows: quantities increased by around four to five percent – down slightly in Western Europe but up in Eastern Europe (and approx. 300 million m² for the whole of Europe). Even here to some extent there were significant cost increases, such as for chemical raw materials at plus 12 percent and an increase in the price of raw chip material for particle board finishing processes which was 20 percent up. At least, the price of paper remained stable.
As a result of reduced raw material stock levels, delivery times increased, whilst retrieval times in particular were set back even further. Price adjustments were extremely sluggish - in contrast to customer/supplier relationships in the laminate and particle board industry.
The prospects for the first quarter of 2007 are good, said Matthias Hoffman, who is also a Director for Business Development with Fundermax GmbH (St. Veit/Austria) and Sprela GmbH (Spremberg/Germany). Order levels are high, although a slight fall-off in incoming orders became noticeable in the last few weeks. Nevertheless, the industry expects good figures, and in particular raw material supplies primarily in the timber sector can be described as stable as a result of the mild winter. In addition to this, timber is readily available following the major storm damage. Sufficient production capacity is available within the laminated panel industry to support a further increase in sales.
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