Stone Statistics - Stone Statistics

Stone Industry Statistics

Ceramic Tile And Stone Consultants (CTaSC) provides stone products research and marketing services. CTaSC can evaluate products and markets to help determine how best to position, promote and distribute your stone products in the USA. In addition to the free information below, there is a Comprehensive Stone Research Report 2010 for the USA Markets that is available that will give you all the details of the Stone Industry. The report provides forecasts and trends, and lists major importers and their foreign suppliers. For more information click the following: Stone Report

To date, stone statistics for the USA have been hard to come by in any complete form. In September of 2003 Catalina Research and Ceramic Tile and Stone Consultants collaborated to publish the first comprehensive stond industry study entitled the "Stone Product Industry Report." A second study, was completed and released in April 2006, and now a new stone study called Natural and Manufactured Stone Product Industry Report for the US and Canadian Markets was released in July 2010 that is now available. This current report includes sections on engineered (quartz) stone, and manufactured stone ( precast concrete). In addition, the report takes an in-depth look at the current state of US construction activity and analyzes the market potential for the stond industry. Click on above link for more information.

The following are some recent stone statictics from the Floor Covering Weekly July 2011 Floorcovering Statistics issue:

Out of the $17.13 billion 2010 U.S. Floor Covering sales stone tile represented 6.2% in wholesale dollars at $1.062 billion compared to ceramic tile at $2.01 billion or 11.6%. Stone Tile represented 1.5% or 260 million square feet of the 17.83 billion square feet of the 2010 U.S. Floor Covering volume compared to ceramic tile at 1.99 billion square feet or 11.2% of the overall floor covering volume. Stone Tile represents natural stone cut into modular tile shapes up to 24 x 24 inches in facial dimensions. Stone tiles can be used on floor or wall applications, although most are assumed to be used on floors.

Stone tiles average wholesale cost is $4.08 per square foot compared to ceramic tile at $1.01 per square foot.

Stone sales in wholesale dollars dropped 1.6% and dropped 4% in 2010.

Stone will be slower to recover compared to ceramic tile due to the higher cost, although the stone look is stone and will be around for a while. Just look at the more popular designs in vinyl, which are all stone look alikes that are being accomplished with the newer ink jet technology for both vinyl and ceramic tile. In fact, now ceramic tile can emulate the wood look using glazing ink jet technology.

The following are some key statistics taken from the Stone Product Industry Report 2010:

U.S. stone product manufacturer sales (shipments plus imports) are estimated to increase by 1.5% to $6.1 billion during 2010 after declining sharply over the previous two years; weaker demand resulted in declining average stone product prices; currently, industry sales continue to be adversely affected by a sluggish builder market and a sharp contraction in non-residential construction spending; U.S. manufacturer sales of engineered and manufactured stone products could drop by 7.9% during 2010; countertops increased their importance to stone product fabricators and processors as well as to importers and installers as stone increased its position in the U.S. countertop market; U.S. stone product sales gains are expected to strengthen over the next five years as the builder and non-residential construction markets rebound from depressed levels.
U.S. consumption of stone was estimated to be $6.00 billion in 2009, compared with $1.85 billion of ceramic tile. This shows stone has 3 times more sales over ceramic tile in terms of dollar value. The $6.00 billion represents a 30% decline from 2008, which had already declined 9.5% in from 2007 which was a record $8.0 billion that year. The compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, for stone is 15.4% between 1998 and 2005, while ceramic tile only acheived a 8.7% CAGR during the same period. In spite of the down economy stone is still taking market share from ceramic tile, as ceramic tile styles continue to try to emulate stone looks.

In 2009, stone imports dropped to $2.12 billion down 37% from $3.37 billion in 2008, representing 42% of U.S. stone consumption. Ceramic tile's import value was about $1.13 billion in 2009, and U.S. consumption of imported tile was 62% of total market value.

The majority of stone imports in the U.S. are from Brazil, representing 19.4% of all imports in 2009. Italy is loosing market share at 15.2% down from 15.3% in 2002. Today other countries are supplying lower-cost stone and gaining in U.S. market share. These include India, which represents 11.0% of imports, Turkey is at 12.5% and Canada stands at 4.5% of U.S. imports.

Granite makes up over 53.8% of total US dollar stone product sales in 2009 and this is up from 49.9% in 2008. A huge portion of the granite supply in the U.S. is used for stone counter tops, which represents a substantial percentage of the 52.1% of the overall stone countertop market in 2009.

In terms of value, counter tops represented 27.8% of the U.S. stone supply in 2009.

In terms of U.S. stone consumption by square foot (volume), the Stone Reports' team determined that 762 million square feet of stone was sold in 2009 down 26.9% from 2008. This compares with the daunting figure of 1.33 billion square feet of ceramic tile that was sold in 2009.

In 2009, stone value averaged at $7.04 eper square foot, down from $7.33 per square foot in 2008. Ceramic tile's average value per square foot was $1.00 in 2009, down from $1.08 in 2008. These figures, combined with survey results from key U.S. importers made it possible to approximate the U.S. consumption of modular stone tile (typically 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick with a surface dimension between 12x12 and 24x24 inches) to be 305 million square feet in 2009, which represents on average 40% of distributor sales.
Stone Flooring sales, which represents the modular stone tiles used on floors as a category of the Floor Covering Industry, dropped 23.4% to $1.08 billion in 2009. Although stone sales increased market share of the total US floor covering market to 6.3% in 2009 up from 5.0% in 2008.
Floor covering categories market share in dollars are Carpet & Areas Rugs 54.6%, Vinyl sheet & floor tile 11.3%, Ceramic Floor & Wall Tile 10.8%, Hardwood 10.8%, Stone Flooring 6.3%, Laminates 5.3%, and Rubber 0.9%.
Floor covering categories market share in volume are Carpet & Areas Rugs 59.8%, Vinyl sheet & floor tile 18.2%, Ceramic Floor & Wall Tile 10.5%, Laminates 5.5%, Hardwood 4.5%, Stone flooring 1.5%, and Rubber 0.3%.
Floor Covering’s End Use break down 2009: Residential total was 65.9% in 2009 vs. 66.5% in 2008 vs. 69.9% in 2007, up from 67.8% in 2006, of overall market value with the remodel portion at 54.8% in 2009 vs. 53.4% in 2008 vs. 55.4% in 2007, new homes at 10.7% in 2009 vs. 12.5% in 2008 vs. 13.8% in 2007. Commercial total was 34.1% in 2009 vs. 28.9% in 2008 vs. 25.9% in 2007, down from 30.9% in 2006, with overall market value of new commercial at 12.2% in 2009 vs. 10.2% in 2008 vs. 9.1% in 2007, and contract commercial at 17.8% in 2009 vs. 18.7% in 2008 vs. 16.8% in 2007. Transportation equipment category represented 4.1% in 2009 vs. 4.6% in 2008 vs. 4.5% in 2007 of the market.
Stone Floor Tile's End Use break down 2009 in residential sales dollars was 57.3% and commercial sales dollars was 42.7%. New Residential construction was 26.1% in 2009 vs. 27.0% in 2008 vs. 30.8% in 2007; Residential replacement & repair was 30.2% in 2009 vs. 29.9% 2008 vs. 29.0% in 2007; New commercial construction was 24.8% in 2009 vs. 16.7% in 2008 vs 23.6% in 2007; Commercial contract was 17.4% in 2009 vs. 25.2% 2008 vs 15.4% in 2007; Factory-built housing was 1.0% in 2009 0.8% in 2008 vs. 0.8% in 2007; Transportation was 1.0% in 2009 vs. 0.4% in 2008 vs. 0.4% in 2007.
Per capita consumption for stone dropped to 2.48 square feet down from 3.43 square feet per captia in 2008. Still the potential for per capita consumption growth in USA is tremendous when you compare it to other countries who exceeds USA per capital consumption factored by double digit values.

The economic environment remains precarious with rising unemployment rates, slowing spending on commercial and other nonresidential building projects, and reduced world economic growth. As a result, it is estimated that US floor coverings square foot sales could decline by another 10.0% to 11.0% in the third quarter. There is hope that we are entering a bottom, and the decline in floor coverings square foot sales could drop to the single digits in the fourth quarter of 2008. This is primarily based on the flattening out of existing home resale. Existing home resales have remained in the 4.9 to 5.0 million range. The stabilization of the existing home resale market could reduce the inventory of unsold homes, which is required before home prices rise and builders start taking more building permits. 2009 has continued to decline and has hopefully reached a plateau.

For more details read September-October 2006 TileDealer Article (click here)

This page will be updated periodically with the most current and complete information available.