Stone Statistics

Ceramic Tile And Stone Consultants (CTaSC) provides ceramic tile research and marketing services. CTaSC can evaluate products and markets to help determine how best to position, promote and distribute your products in the USA. In addition to the free information below, there is a Comprehensive Stone Research Report 2006 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 study entitled the "Stone Product Industry Report." A second study, conducted in April 2006 is now available (click on above link for more information), and a new 2009 Stone Report will be released in April 2010.

The following are some key statistics taken from the Stone Product Industry Report 2006:

U.S. consumption of stone was estimated to be $6.04 billion in 2005, compared with $3.04 billion of ceramic tile. This shows stone has a 99% lead over tile in terms of dollar value. 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 2005, stone imports increased to $3.34 billion, representing 55% of U.S. stone consumption. Ceramic tile's import value was about $2 billion in 2004, and U.S. consumption of imported tile was 70% of total market value.

The majority of stone imports in the U.S. are from Italy, representing 21.2% of all imports in 2005. Italy is loosing market share, down from 33% in 2002. Today other countries are supplying lower-cost stone and gaining in U.S. market share. These include Brazil, which represents 17.7% of imports, China is at 13.8%, Turkey is at 13.6% and India stands at 11.3% of U.S. imports.

Granite makes up over 46.8% of stone imports in 2005. A huge portion of the granite supply in the U.S. is used for stone counter tops, which represents 47.8% of the overall countertop market in 2005.

In terms of value, counter tops represented 26.8% of the U.S. stone supply in 2005.

In terms of U.S. stone consumption by square foot (volume), the Stone Reports' team determined that 956 million square feet of stone was sold in 2005. This compares with the daunting figure of 3.21 billion square feet of ceramic tile that was sold in 2004.

In 2005, stone value averaged at $6.16 per sq. ft., down from $6.77 in 2002. Ceramic tile's average value per square foot was $0.95 in 2005, up from $0.89 in 2002. 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 363 million square feet in 2005.

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.