Furniture withstands the crisis

No panic. The wood-furniture industry has all it takes to face the difficult situation of the markets, starting from the domestic scenario. The crisis has caused the slowdown of the construction industry as well as consumption stagnation, even if in the first six months of 2009 no huge improvements are expected. This message comes from the preliminary figures processed by the Cosmit/Federlegno Arredo study center and presented few days ago. From construction to furniture industries, wood has suffered from a slowdown in 2008 – after two years of growth – recording an industry production turnover of -4.5 percent for an overall value reaching 38 billion Euros approximately. The negative situation has been mainly influenced by domestic demand, as proved by a 6.3 percent loss versus 2007 in apparent domestic consumption (31.4 billion Euros). Export have recorded a slight decrease, loosing 2 percent (13.4 billion Euros), with a 7.8 percent drop of import (6.9 billion Euros). The trade balance keeps a positive trend with +5 percent as compared to 2007, recording a value that exceeds 6.5 billion Euros. The furniture industry (home, office and other furniture, lighting fixtures and furniture accessories) has proved to stand the impact of the global crisis, recording a production turnover of approximately 23 billion Euros and a 3.4 percent decrease against a 6.2 percent drop in the wood industry (wood products for the construction industry and all other wood-based elements including semi-finished products and furniture components), that is almost 15 billion Euros. According to the figures processed by Cosmit//Fla, furniture export have recorded -1.3 percent (11.8 billion Euros) – against 8 percent increase recorded in the previous year – while wood export have decreased by -7.1 percent (1.5 billion), with a direct influence of respectively 2.2 percent and -1 percent on turnover. A different trend has been recorded also for import, with a 2 percent decrease for the furniture industry (2.6 billion Euros) and a value of 9.2 billion Euros for the trade balance, and a drop by 11.1 percent for wood (4.2 billion Euros). In the domestic market the furniture industry has recorded a reduction by 4.9 percent (13.6 billion Euros) as compared to -7.3 percent of the wood industry (17.7 billion Euros); a slowdown which has been recorded also for export and which has particularly penalized the wood industry also due to the general negative trend of the construction industry and of raw material wood import in the first months of the year.