The incredible growth in China's large plate production capacity may bring some benefits to the domestic ceramic industry, but also bring some potential new challenges, some of which may not be minor.
If I remember correctly, Italy launched a 1×3m large board produced by System Company in 2005. The first brand to release such a large board was LAMINAM. Since then, the world's large-scale plate production capacity has grown slowly, mainly expanding in Italy and Spain. This expansion lasted for ten years, from 2005 to 2014, during which only about 10 large-panel production lines were installed. It seems like just yesterday that we all thought that such an oversized product was difficult to sell, handle, process, cut, install and display in a showroom, so it had no future.
At that time, we were all right, not much happened, many people did not believe that these large format products would have an impact on our industry, the installation of production lines was very low, only some in Italy and some in Spain , one in Turkey.
No one talks much about big boards, and no one is too interested in them. When you hear about big boards, there are just all kinds of questions about them, including the most critical ones: cutting, cost, and processing.
It wasn’t until 2015, 10 years later, that “Slate” began to make some noise. It was at this time that the world-renowned top Italian brands began producing large slabs. To name just a few brands or ceramic groups, Florim, Atlas Concorde, Panaria, ABK and Fondovalle are some of the best.
Ten years later, with the continuous advancement and development of technology and craftsmanship, these large boards have become bigger, better, more realistic, and more reasonably priced. The world began to notice this change and interest in ceramic slabs grew. Sales are starting to improve to interesting numbers, but there's still a lot of concern, about the same main question we've been asking ourselves all the time: Can these big slabs really sell in interesting numbers? Honestly, most people say no! But it is undeniable that the sales of large boards continue to increase, mainly between 2015 and 2017 when some other brands opened production lines of this specification. Until then, there were about 30 - 40 installed around the world.
Then everyone realized that large board specifications would always exist, and then we had the Indian large board phenomenon, from 2015 to 2In 2018, India opened 12 new large plate factories in just 3 to 4 years. We also feel this in China, because many new products have landed in the domestic market, bringing confusion, questions, worries and new challenges. The market was suddenly flooded with slabs from Italy and now a large number from India. Products come from two completely different categories, the most expensive one comes from Italy, the cheapest one comes from India, both are made with the same equipment (Italian), both have good quality (we said polished quality) , but matte finish is not), but there is a big gap in good design, not only because the Italian designs have better solutions, but also because all the big boards from India look the same, no matter which brand they come from .
But then, many began to question why China did not take any action. Why doesn't China install new large panel factories? Why does China allow the initiative to be given to India?
Then, the expected thing happened,At the end of 2019, suddenly China announced that it would install an astonishing number of new large board production lines of multiple brands in 2020. By the end of 2021, the total of these production lines will be almost That’s half of the world’s existing production capacity.
Why so many? Is there such a demand for large boards? Where will these quantities be sold? Does China have enough demand to consume all this capacity? Or, in a situation where the market is flooded with high-end high-priced slabs from Italy and cheap and high-quality slabs from India, is there still an international demand for Chinese products to be sold? Can Chinese products be somewhere in the middle? Is there something these brands know that we don’t?
I cannot fathom world demand increasing so much (twice) in such a short period of time. Only a few countries can buy these products, and only a few of them know how to handle them (cutting, installation, processing, etc.).
I have a feeling that the coming excess capacity will shake up world markets in various ways, with a positive impact on some countries but a negative impact on others, especially those with greater power. weak. I believe thatby the end of next year, once most of these production lines are installed in China, we will be facing a comprehensive price correction (not a war, I hope) and factories will be closed temporarily or permanently, or sold to larger players , some Indian and Chineses. Some large panel factories will only run production lines occasionally, or some will become super OEM suppliers, like some factories in Italy.
In my humble opinion, I believe there will be overcapacity and we should expect some of the things I mentioned. From another perspective, on the positive side, these new production lines will definitely bring about upgrading of the industry.
What do you think? Will these rock slabs become the next big thing or a big problem? Welcome to discuss in the message area!
(The article is reproduced from Ceramic Information)
