The Furniture Industry Research Association (FIRA) released its annual statistical report on the UK furniture industry in February this year. The report lists the cost and trade trends of furniture manufacturing industry and provides decision-making benchmarks for enterprises.

This statistic covers the economic trend of UK, the structure of UK furniture manufacturing industry and trade relations with other parts of the world. It also covers customized furniture, office furniture and other furniture sub-industries in UK. The following is a partial summary of this statistical report:

 Overview of British Furniture and Home Industry

The UK furniture and home industry covers design, manufacturing, retail and maintenance, much larger than most people think.

In 2017, the total output value of furniture and household manufacturing industry was 11.83 billion pounds (about 101.7 billion yuan), an increase of 4.8% over the previous year.

Furniture manufacturing industry accounts for the largest proportion, with a total output value of 8.76 billion. This data comes from about 120,000 employees in 8489 companies.

Increase in new housing to stimulate consumption potential of furniture and household industry

Although the number of new houses in Britain has been decreasing in recent years, the number of new houses in 2016-2017 increased by 13.5% compared with that in 2015-2016, totaling 23,780 new houses.

In fact, new housing in Britain from 2016 to 2017 has reached a new high since 2007 to 2008.

Suzie Radcliffe Hart, technical manager and author of the report at FIRA International, commented: “This reflects the pressure the British government has faced in recent years to increase its efforts to develop affordable housing. With the increase of new housing and the renovation of housing, the potential additional consumption expenditure on furniture and household goods will increase greatly and small.

Preliminary surveys in 2017 and 2018 showed that the number of new homes in Wales (-12.1%), England (-2.9%) and Ireland (-2.7%) all fell sharply (Scotland has no relevant data).

Any new housing can significantly increase the sales potential of furniture. However, the number of new housing is much lower than the four years before the 2008 financial crisis, when the number of new housing was between 220,000 and 235,000.

The latest data show that furniture and household decoration sales continued to grow in 2018. In the first and second quarter, consumer spending increased by 8.5% and 8.3% respectively compared with the same period last year.

China Become Britain’s First Importer of Furniture,Around 33%

In 2017, Britain imported 6.01 billion pounds of furniture (about 51.5 billion yuan) and 5.4 billion pounds of furniture in 2016. Because the instability caused by Britain’s exit from Europe still exists, it is estimated that it will decline slightly in 2018, about 5.9 billion pounds.

In 2017, the majority of British furniture imports came from China (1.98 billion pounds), but the proportion of Chinese furniture imports dropped from 35% in 2016 to 33% in 2017.

In terms of imports alone, Italy has become the second largest importer of furniture in the UK, Poland has risen to third place and Germany to fourth place. In terms of proportion, they account for 10%, 9.5% and 9% of British furniture imports, respectively. The imports of these three countries are about 500 million pounds.

UK furniture imports to the EU totaled 2.73 billion pounds in 2017, an increase of 10.6% over the previous year (imports in 2016 were 2.46 billion pounds). From 2015 to 2017, imports grew by 23.8% (an increase of 520 million pounds).