EPLF: Worldwide Sales of Laminate Continued to Gro
Brussels, Belgium, February 2, 2006 -- The European Producers of Laminate Flooring (EPLF) reported that worldwide sales for their 21 member companies with the “Made in Europe” stamp was 456 million m2 this was a rise of 4.5% on the previous year.
With the EPLF member companies holding around 60% of the market this put the total worldwide sales of laminate flooring at around 760 million m2.
There was only a slight improvement in the Western European market with EPLF members selling 269 million m2. The biggest single European market remains Germany with sales 84 million m2. Great Britain remains the 2nd largest European market despite a drop of 8 million m2 on the previous year to 41 million m2 in 2005. The French market has yet again improved with sales up slightly to 38million m2, while the Dutch market remained the same as 2004 figures with sales of 20 million m2.
It is in Eastern European market which posted the largest growth rate sales increased from 68million m2 in 2004 to 77 million m2 in 2005, this represents a healthy growth rate of 14%. Ahead of the field was Poland with 21.5 million m2, the Russian Federation with 12million m2, Romania with 11 million m2 and Hungary with 6 million m2. This represents a continuation of last year’s trend.
North America sales continued to grow for ELPF member companies with a growth rate of 9% which represents a sales increase of 7 million m2 to 86 million m2. The majority of these sales were in the USA with 67 million m2 an increase of 12%
The South American market is also growing with figures up from 7.9 millionm2 in 2004 to 10 million m2 in 2005.
