The trade background to the Domotex 2017 flooring show held in Hanover between 12 and 15 January indicates that internal EU trade in wood flooring has been rising continuously since December 2013.

This is due partly to improving consumption of wood flooring products manufactured in the EU, and to the increasing role of manufacturing facilities in lower cost Eastern European countries to supply wood flooring to other parts of the EU.

Meanwhile, the EU’s large trade deficit in wood flooring that opened up before the financial crises, driven by the housing bubble and a flood of product from Asia, has narrowed sharply in recent years.

Efforts by European manufacturers to improve competitiveness through innovation in products and marketing, aided by the relative weakness of the euro and other European currencies compared to the US dollar, contributed to rising EU exports of wood flooring products to other parts of the world last year.

At the same time imports from outside the EU continued to decline in 2016. Much of the decline in EU wood flooring imports is due to falling trade with China, by far the largest external supplier accounting for around 60% of total EU imports.

EU imports of wood flooring from China were around 16 million sq.m in the 12 months to end November 2016, compared to 17.4 million sq.m a year earlier and over 21 million sq.m in 2012.

EU imports of wood flooring from tropical countries have also been declining in recent years. Imports from Indonesia in the 12 months to November 2016 were 1.16 million sq.m compared to 1.45 million sq.m a year earlier.

Imports from Malaysia fell from 1.31 million sq.m to 0.94 million sq.m during the same period.

The data is particularly significant from an Indonesian perspective. The figures to the end of November represent the real baseline against which the immediate impact of the FLEGT licensing system can be judged.

The first FLEGT licenses were issued in the middle of November and it will be interesting to monitor whether the recent slide in EU wood flooring imports from Indonesia can be reversed.