SMALL businesses that produce domestic furniture will be increasingly vulnerable to imports, but larger commercial-furniture makers face a better future, according to a study.<\/p>\n
Imports will continue to surge, but at a slower rate, while exports will grow steadily but off a low base, says the study, prepared by consultants for the Furnishing Industry Association of Australia (Vic\/Tas).
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\nThis trend will not cut the huge trade deficit in furniture products, which will still worsen but more slowly than in the past.<\/p>\n
“The industry balance will continue to inexorably shift from the domestic-furniture sector to the commercial-furniture sector,” says the study, which investigated manufacturing trends in the industry in the seven years to 2004-05, with a forecast to 2016-10.<\/p>\n
“The overall outlook is probably more optimistic than that predicted by many industry commentators.”<\/p>\n
Revenue from furniture manufacturing will grow at a compound rate of less than 3 per cent, with industry turnover hit by a subdued, cyclical housing market. This will be offset by solid growth in non-residential building.<\/p>\n
The study says the number of furniture companies would contract slightly as the least efficient went to the wall and bigger companies rationalised their plants.<\/p>\n
There will be modest jobs growth but most will be part-time or casual.<\/p>\n
Both domestic- and commercial-furniture production has been affected by imports, particularly from China.<\/p>\n
However, commercial manufacturers are less vulnerable because most of their output is made to specific orders.<\/p>\n
“By contrast, most residential furniture is sold off the showroom floor,” the study says. Residential-furniture makers most exposed to imports are those in the mid-range (10 to 49 employees).<\/p>\n
“Smaller (often family-based) manufacturers can often continue to trade albeit with reduced turnover and profitability,” the study says.<\/p>\n
Imports in 2004-05 were valued at $1.8 billion, having grown at a compound rate of 14 per cent in the previous seven years, making up 21 per cent of domestic sales.<\/p>\n
In contrast, exports in 2004-05 were valued at $150 million, with a compound growth of 2.5 per cent.<\/p>\n
“Little growth has been made in this area in spite of recognition by the industry that exports growth is vital to the long-term health of the industry,” the study says.<\/p>\n
“The industry is characterised by small-scale firms lacking the necessary management skills and financial resources to carry out long-term export and other development strategies.”<\/p>\n
In the seven years to 2004-05, furniture manufacturing benefited from the decade of sustained economic growth, with revenue increasing by 6.3 per cent \u00e2\u20ac\u201d still well below imports growth \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to $6.8 billion.<\/p>\n
The number of furniture factories grew by 0.9 per cent to 3651, with jobs growing at the same rate, giving furniture manufacturing a total of 43,673 employees. Victoria constituted 31.6 per cent of the total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SMALL businesses that produce domestic furniture will be increasingly vulnerable to imports, but larger commercial-furniture makers face a better future, according to a study. Imports will continue to surge, but at a slower rate, while exports will grow steadily but off a low base, says the study, prepared by consultants for the Furnishing Industry Association […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}