Spanish ceramic sector suffers 15% downturn in 2008

Spain has been badly hit by the global crisis, closing 2008 with a strong contraction in the ceramic sector. According to preliminary results estimated by Ascer, production fell on a year-on-year basis by 15% in volume, with a peak fall of 23% in December. The ceramic manufacturing industry has lost 19 companies, 8% of the total of 200, almost all of which are concentrated in the province of Valencia, and has seen a 15% fall in employment.

As for sales, the preliminary 2008 figures point to a 11.4% fall in value corresponding to 3,700 million euro. The biggest decline was in the domestic market, where sales plummeted by 22%. Exports performed more strongly with a mere 3% fall to a total of 2.23 billion euro.
Alongside these figures, “the forecasts for 2009 are not at all optimistic”, commented the Spanish Ceramic Association’s chairman Fernando Diago.

The association’s secretary general Pedro Riaza agrees. “Companies are operating at 76% of their capacity,” he says. “Up to November 2008 exports fell by just 1.9%. Average prices are also increasing. 60% of the sector’s sales are generated in the export market, including more than 50% in major European countries.”

Ascer is also devoting efforts to protecting jobs and is negotiating an early retirement scheme for workers over 55 years of age with the trade unions. This will affect 2,000 workers out of the sector’s total workforce of 24,000.
At a time when companies lack liquidity, the main hurdle is the impossibility of obtaining bank loans to survive the present and invest in the future.

Diago advocates globalisation and urges companies to pool their resources to create joint ventures, mergers and increasingly robust groups capable of weathering the crisis.