The stone industry has a huge market potential, with an annual demand exceeding 600 million m2 from 2021-2025
With the development of architectural design, stone has already become one of the important raw materials for building, decoration, road and bridge construction. As a high-grade product of building decoration materials, stone materials are mainly divided into building plates, dry hanging plates, special-shaped stones, pavement stones, carved stone products, etc. according to the shape and use of the products.
The common method in the market is to divide it into natural stone and artificial stone. Among them, natural stone materials can be divided into six categories: granite, marble, limestone, sandstone, slate and secondary gem; Artificial stones can be divided into three categories: Dupontite, microcrystalline and artificial quartz.
Among them, the thinnest thickness of ultra-thin stone in natural stone is usually 8 mm~10 mm. After years of dedicated research and development, InBev can achieve the thinnest thickness of 3-8 mm, which can meet the needs of various projects.
Analysis on the current situation and development trend of stone industry in 2020
In the new era, the stone industry will show a different development trend, mainly in five aspects.
First, the price of products continues to fall. Due to overcapacity, the domestic stone inventory is high and needs at least five years to be consumed. The overcrowding of supply over demand will inevitably lead to the continuous decline of product prices.
Second, the product price was adjusted in depth. As the price goes down, the market competition will become more intense, and mergers and acquisitions, reorganization, elimination and bankruptcy will occur, forcing all links in the stone industry chain to adjust and upgrade.
Third, traditional channels are challenged. The acceleration of industry integration will inevitably lead to channel reform. At the same time, with the advent of the era of big home furnishing, traditional channels will be further challenged, and it is necessary to realize the deep integration of e-commerce mode and dealer operation mode as soon as possible.
Fourth, environmental pressure continues to increase. Under the background of increasing environmental pressure, the stone industry has started an industrial transfer from the traditional Fujian and Shandong provinces to the northwest provinces.
Fifth, brand building has a long way to go. China's stone enterprises are large in number, small in scale, concentrated in processing or wholesale, and lack of technology, services and brands. After entering the transformation and upgrading period, the future will present diversified development, and brand building is extremely urgent.
1、 Market scale and growth rate of stone industry
Investment in real estate development will increase by about 10% annually in 2019, and the industry expects that the growth rate of investment in real estate development will remain between 7% and 10% in 2020. In 2019, the construction area of new houses nationwide was 227154 square meters, an increase of 8.5% year on year and a decrease of 0.1% year on year. In December, the construction area of new houses increased by 7.4%. The completed area from January to December was 959.42 million square meters, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year and 6.1% over January to November.
It is estimated that in 2020, the newly constructed area and the completed area will increase by 5% and 10% respectively. In terms of construction commencement, the overall willingness of real estate enterprises to acquire land fell 11.4% year on year in 2019. At present, the industry has basically shifted from the concept of hoarding to the idea of rapid turnover, and the marginal slowdown of real estate enterprises has reduced the growth rate of new construction. However, under the background of relatively abundant overall land reserves of enterprises in 2018-2019, it is expected that the growth rate of entrepreneurship in the whole year will still be positive, and the growth rate is expected to be about 5%. In terms of completion, as real estate enterprises speed up the flow of capital to the market and keep relatively stable in the development cycle of real estate projects, the pre-sale of commercial housing in 2017-2019 will be gradually completed in 2019-2021, and the completion rate of commercial housing is expected to increase by 10% in 2020.
The demand of stone market is closely related to the development of the real estate industry, and is in direct proportion to the issuance of the real estate industry. In the past two years, the development of the real estate industry has been affected by macro-control. Compared with the annual completed area of 1 billion in the past few years, the market size of the stone industry has also shrunk. With the impact of the epidemic, the market size of the stone industry will further shrink in 2020, from 650 million square meters in 2019 to 560 million square meters in 2020.
2、 Market saturation of stone industry
The number of stone enterprises in China's stone market is about 20000, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises. Most of the products are low-end products, basically meeting the market demand. In addition, the stone industry itself has a low threshold and fierce competition. In this sense, the market saturation of China's stone industry is relatively high, especially in low-end products. Some even have oversupply.
3、 Factors affecting the market scale of stone industry
1. Macroeconomy
In recent years, China's macroeconomic downturn has had a significant impact. At present, under the new normal of macroeconomic downturn and transformation and upgrading, the overall growth rate of real estate investment in recent two years has slightly increased, but the weak state of real estate demand has intensified, and the contradiction between supply and demand in the traditional building materials industry has become more prominent. As a resource-based industry, the prosperity of the stone industry is obviously affected by the economic downturn.
2. Supply side reform
De capacity and de inventory are the new normal in China in recent years. The rapid expansion of the real estate market in the early years has driven the development of a number of related industries such as building materials. The number and capacity of stone enterprises have almost doubled every year. Nowadays, the economy is declining, the real estate market remains weak, the policy is weak, the internal and external demand is shrinking, and the sales are not smooth. The stone industry is relatively overcapacity, and the inventory problem is more difficult. Enterprises have to digest the accumulated inventory in previous years and reduce imports.
3. Entering the home decoration market encounters resistance
With the decline of tooling market demand, stone people gradually focus on the home decoration market. However, there are many obstacles for the stone industry to enter the home decoration market. Because the standardization of the stone industry has not made progress, and the society has a misunderstanding of the radioactivity of marble products and the malicious smear of competitors, although the authoritative department has refuted the rumor, due to the relative lag, the misunderstanding of consumption cognition still exists, which hinders the stone industry from entering the home decoration market.
4. Rising labor and environmental protection costs
As the stone industry is a typical labor-intensive traditional manufacturing industry, the rising labor costs and operating and management costs in recent years are eroding the remaining profit space of stone enterprises. Under the situation of the industry downturn, the pressure on enterprises to increase costs has become a common appeal of enterprises. In addition, the promulgation of the Environmental Protection Law imposed daily and continuous fines on persistent environmental violations. This means that the longer the violation lasts, the more fines will be imposed, and the environmental protection cost of stone enterprises will increase
5. Fierce price competition
Under the new normal of low profit survival of enterprises, the demand of stone market shrinks, the sales of enterprises are not smooth, the inventory is high, and the profit giving promotion has become a new business. Although this can revitalize some funds, with the continuous rise of production and operation costs, the market competition is unprecedented fierce. Enterprises compete to lower prices, leaving little profit. Small and medium-sized enterprises are trapped in the dilemma of survival.
6. Increased pressure on capital turnover
At present, the financing of stone enterprises is becoming more and more difficult. If enterprises want to obtain bank loans, they need to have asset collateral. However, few enterprises meet the requirements, and the loan cost is high. Due to the nonstandard financial system, simple management framework and other factors of stone enterprises, it is difficult to enter the capital market for direct financing through listing or issuing bonds. In the past, in order to repay the loan, some enterprises would borrow on loan funds through upstream and downstream, family businesses, and even private lending. But now, in the case of bad credit environment, these channels have become impractical. However, the previous "borrowing new to pay old" model of banks was prohibited, and new loans could only be issued after the old accounts were paid off. The capital turnover pressure of stone enterprises is increasing, and overdue repayment may also lead to a credit crisis.
4、 Market size and growth forecast of stone industry from 2020 to 2025
With the implementation of real estate macro-control, the real estate dividend will gradually fade in the next few years, and the construction area and completed area will not increase significantly. Therefore, it is expected that the market size will also maintain at a certain level in the next few years, with a demand of about 600 million square meters.
随着建筑设计的发展，石材早已经成为建筑、装饰、道路、桥梁建设的重要原料之一。作为建筑装饰材料的高档产品，石材按产品形状及用途主要分为建筑板材、干挂板材、异型石材、路面石料、雕刻石制品等。
市场上常用的分法是将其分为天然石材和人造石材。其中，天然石材按材料可分为：花岗石、大理石、石灰石、砂岩、板石、次宝石六类；人造石可以分为三类：杜邦石、微晶石和人造石英石。
其中，天然石材中的超薄石材最薄厚度通常在8mm～10mm，而英博公司历经多年潜心研发实践，可以将石材最薄厚度做到3-8mm，能够满足各类工程所需。
