In 2019, the worldwide sales of the European Producers of Laminate Flooring Association e.V. (EPLF) members was 447 million m² of laminate flooring from European production (2018: 454 million m², i.e. -1.5%). The second half of 2019 has witnessed an upturn recovering and is stabilizing at a high level, even though the influence of declining world trade remains noticeable globally.
In Western Europe (including Turkey), total sales in 2019 reached 219 million m² (225 million m² in 2018). This represents a decline of 2.1 % compared to the previous year. Germany remains by far the most important single market in Central Europe with 50 million m² (52 million m² in 2018). However, the setback is slowing down compared to previous years with a reduction of 5%.
France remains second in Europe, improving by 1.1% in 2019 to 36.5 million m² (36 million m² in 2018). A positive trend for EPLF members can be seen in Great Britain: at 32.6 million m² in 2019 (29.8 million m² in 2018), the dent in the previous year's figure was offset by an increase of 9.5%. The country thus continues to rank third in Western European sales ahead of the Netherlands, where association sales in 2019 improved by 1.4% to 18.6 million m² (18.3 million in 2018). Spain also reported positive developments: sales figures for laminate flooring increased by 1.4% to 16.7 million m² (16.5 million m² in 2018).
EPLF members in Russia reported 43.8 million m² (39 million m² in 2018), which corresponds to a growth rate of 11.4 %. Poland improved by 6.1% to 31.2 million m² (29.5 million m² in 2018). The Ukraine is developing into the "rising star" in Eastern Europe: with 10.1 million m², the country moved into third place in the region (+ 32.5% compared to the previous year with 7.6 million m²). Romania and Hungary are behind with 10 million m² (11 million m² in 2018) and 7 million m² (- 2.4% in comparison to 2018).
After a boom in the USA, North America has returned to a normal level, slowed down by a double-digit reduction in Canada. In 2019, a total of 40 million m² (44.3 million m² in 2018) were sold in North America, around 9.6% less than in the previous year. The USA showed a slight setback of 3.2% in 2019 with around 29.7 million m² (30.7 million m² in 2018), in Canada only close to 10.3 million m² (previous year 13.6 million m²) were registered in 2019, which means a decline of 24.7%.
The smaller export regions showed signs of the slowdown in world trade. Asia fell by 6% from 30 million m² to 28.2 million m² - with the positive exception of the Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan stabilized at the comparatively high level of 4 million m² with a small increase of 0.1%. Latin America declined from 18.5 million m² in 2018 to 15.7 million m² in 2019 (- 15.2%). Africa was also unable to continue the positive trend of previous years. The total sales volume of the various export markets from the north to the south of the continent fell slightly from 5.0 million m² in 2018 to 4.9 million m², which corresponds to a decline of 2.1%.
The Association of European Producers of Laminate Flooring (EPLF®), based in Bielefeld, Germany, is an organization which represents the leading producers of laminate flooring in Europe and their suppliers.
