Mid-2008: New World Orders?
The even-lower totals of January-June 2008 point to a diminished market for worked granite – dimensional stone’s largest sector – and, in the latest month available, July 2008’s total of 117.1 metric tons is a 43.86-percent drop from July 2007. Overall, the view seems grim.
However, the wild fluctuations of worked granite – other stone sectors show similar swings of supply and value – makes trying to predict a trend more of a WAG (wild-assed guess) number than a solid indicator. Even with seven months of data, it’s still too early to tell what’s going to happen.
GRANITE
Although the previous section centered on granite imports, it’s clear from January-June 2008 data that the slowdown in the U.S. economy had one clear victim in the sector: Brazil. When a country ships half-as-much material to its best customer, times are tough.
Through 2006, Brazil’s worked-granite exports boomed, to the point that Brazilian shippers reportedly couldn’t find enough dock space in ports to handle the almost one millon metric tons headed for the United States. The flow slowed in the second half of last year, but Brazil still shipped more than 800,000 metric tons here.
Now, Brazil’s nowhere near the heady 2006 days when the country shipped worked granite to the United States in 100,000-plus-metric-ton months. February 2008 marked the first sub-30,000-metric-ton month, and the country could be on the way to seeing its U.S. shipment fall to one-half of last year’s totals.
China, meanwhile, picked up some of the slack in overtaking Brazil as the leader of the worked-granite sector. With the exception of a weak March 2008 of 20,138 metric tons (coming on the heels of an above-average 74,728 metric tons in February), monthly Chinese shipments to the United States in 2008 slightly outpace those in 2006 and 2007. It’s building a market share, slowly but surely.
India, meanwhile, saw its U.S. worked-granite exports fall off in the second half of last year, and then recover (with a few declining months) in January-June this year. And Italy continues to lose volume share; the 104,790 metric tons of worked granite sent to the United States in the first half of 2008 represents a 51.74-percent decline from the same time last year.
The main impetus behind China’s and India’s gain – and losses with Brazil and Italy – may be the value-per-metric-ton value for worked-granite imports in 2008’s first half. India came in lowest, with an average of $448.69, with China’s average close behind at $489.12. That’s a far distance from Brazil’s per-metric-ton value of $891.43, and Italy’s $1,045.61, where the strong currencies of the real and the euro, respectively, served to inflate corresponding dollar data.
MARBLE
In 2007, worked marble provided one of the bright spots in U.S. dimensional-stone imports. The first half of this year doesn’t extinguish the light, but it’s getting very dim.
First, the good news: Worked-marble import value fell in first-half 2008, but only slightly. The $141.9 million coming into the United States in January-June this year is only 6.58-percent-less than during the same period in 2007.
Italy, the traditional king of the U.S. marble market, held its own; the $63.7 million in first-half 2008 imports represented only a one-point dip from the same time last year. Second-place China ($20.3 million) and fourth-place Turkey ($11.1 million) showed gains of 7.09 percent and 8.09 percent, respectively; only third-place Spain ($19.3 million) marked a significant decline of 24.98 percent.
Worked-marble imports increased in volume in 2007 over 2006, offering one of the only bits of year-end good news. As with everything else in U.S. stone imports, the upside didn’t last long.
The 112,575 metric tons of worked marble coming here in first-half 2008 represented a 20.74-percent decline from January-June 2007. China’s total – 23,256 metric tons – dropped the least at 11.86 percent to move into second place in the sector. Turkey, in the fourth spot, fell by 12.68 percent at 12,563 metric tons.
Italy led the category at 33,435 metric tons, but that’s down 17.54 percent from first-half 2007. Spain, meanwhile, dropped from second place to third in worked granite imports, with its 16,998 metric tons showing a 37.02-percent decline.
As with worked granite, the average value-per-ton of worked marble may be affecting the depth of decline with U.S. imports. The two market leaders with lesser drops in metric tons shipped here – China and Turkey – show per-ton values of $874.64 and $888.34, respectively. Italy’s per-ton value, always reflecting a high premium, comes in $1,908.53, while Spain – another euro-based economy – registers $1,141.02.
TRAVERTINE
Turkey continues to dominate U.S. travertine imports, both in value and volume. Unlike granite and marble, however, values dropped much faster than the actual tonnage arriving in domestic ports-of-entry.
The $204.6 million in travertine imports during first-half 2008 marked a 22.07-percent decline from the same period last year. Turkey sets the stage here; its $126.2 million for January-June represented a drop of 24.27 percent from last year’s first six months.
Second-place Mexico ($37.4 million) slid 22.6 percent, while Italy ($16.1 million) declined by 19.73 percent. Peru provided the high point here, with $10.6 million in value for first-half 2008 eking out a 2.66-percent gain over the same time last year.