In 2019, the worldwide sales of the EPLF members was 447 million m2 of laminate flooring from European production (2018: 454 million m2, i.e. -1.5%). The second half of 2019 has witnessed an upturn recovering and is stabilizing at a high level, even though the influence of declining world trade remains noticeable globally. The EPLF “home market” of Western Europe fell slightly in 2019, although important Western European countries are currently already reporting positive figures. Eastern Europe also delivered strong figures, while overseas sales experienced a setback.
In Western Europe (including Turkey), total sales in 2019 reached 219 million m2 (225 million m2 in 2018). This represents a decline of 2.1 % compared to the previous year. Germany remains by far the most important single market in Central Europe with 50 million m2 (52 million m2 in 2018). However, the setback is slowing down compared to previous years with a reduction of 5.0 %.
France remains second in Europe, improving by 1.1 % in 2019 to 36.5 million m2 (36.0 million m2 in 2018). A positive trend for EPLF members can be seen in Great Britain: at 32.6 million m2 in 2019 (29.8 million m2 in 2018), the dent in the previous year’s figure was offset by an increase of 9.5 %. The country thus continues to rank third in Western European sales ahead of the Netherlands, where association sales in 2019 improved by 1.4% to 18.6 million m2 (18.3 million in 2018). Spain also reported positive developments: sales figures for laminate flooring increased by 1.4% to 16.7 million m2 (16.5 million m2 in 2018).
A clear upward trend is evident in Eastern Europe. The region confirms its role as an important future market for EPLF manufacturers. With 135 million m2 (128 million m2 in 2018), the European laminate flooring manufacturers achieved a good result there in 2019. EPLF members in Russia reported 43.8 million m2 (39 million m2 in 2018), which corresponds to a growth rate of 11.4 %. Poland improved by 6.1% to 31.2 million m2 (29.5 million m2 in 2018). The Ukraine is developing into the “rising star” in Eastern Europe: with 10.1 million m2, the country moved into third place in the region (+ 32.5% compared to the previous year with 7.6 million m2). Romania and Hungary are behind with 10 million m2 (11 million m2 in 2018) and 7 million m2 (- 2.4% in comparison to 2018).
After a boom in the USA, North America has returned to a normal level, slowed down by a double-digit reduction in Canada. In 2019, a total of 40 million m2 (44.3 million m2 in 2018) were sold in North America, around 9.6% less than in the previous year. The USA showed a slight setback of 3.2% in 2019 with around 29.7 million m2 (30.7 million m2 in 2018), in Canada only close to 10.3 million m2 (previous year 13.6 million m2) were registered in 2019, which means a decline of 24.7%.
The smaller export regions showed signs of the slowdown in world trade. Asia fell by 6% from 30 million m2 to 28.2 million m2 – with the positive exception of the Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan stabilized at the comparatively high level of 4 million m2 with a small increase of 0.1%. Latin America declined from 18.5 million m2 in 2018 to 15.7 million m2 in 2019 (- 15.2%). Africa was also unable to continue the positive trend of previous years. The total sales volume of the various export markets from the north to the south of the continent fell slightly from 5.0 million m2 in 2018 to 4.9 million m2, which corresponds to a decline of 2.1%.