'BIZNES meble.pl' international edition 2/2019

16 industry • the economic situation in the furniture industry biznes meble.pl | international edition 2/2019 W ith regard to the publication of official data of the Statis- tics Poland, it is worth con- sidering the results of individual groups of companies. For large and medium en- terprises counted together – the val- ue of sold production in 2018 amount- ed to 36,477.8 million PLN. Compared to 34,857.8 million PLN in 2017 – that means a below average increase, that is by 4.6% YOY. Faster growth can be ob- served in the value of sold production in case of small businesses. In 2018, that value amounted to 8,034.3 million PLN which represents an increase of al- most 16% compared to 2017. At the same time, the reported increase in production in micro companies was about 200 mil- lion PLN – from 3.4 billion PLN in 2017 to around 3.6 billion PLN in 2018 which translates into 5.9% YOY dynamics. To sum up, it can be stated that large and medium companies slowed down and that opportunity was seized by small com- panies. The question remains whether the high sales growth of small companies trans- lated into higher profits or, on the contrary, they tried to win the market at the expense of lower profits. Volumes of production in the first quarter of 2019 Analysing the volumes of production of four furniture groups monitored by the Statistics Poland, we can observe positive dynamics in two of them. The highest in- crease in the volume of production con- cerned wooden furniture of the type used in the kitchen with a result of 1,372 thou- sand units which gives an increase of 27.2% compared to the same period of 2018. In the first quarter of 2019, Polish furniture man- ufacturers produced more seating furni- ture transformed into sleeping places – 941 thousand items, while in the same period of the previous year it was 928 thousand items (+ 1.4% YOY). In the case of seating furniture with wooden frame, the volume was 4,799 thou- sand units whereas a year ago it was 4,828 thousand units (-0.6%YOY).Also for the re- maining groups of furniture there was a de- crease: wooden furniture of the type used in the bedroom (-6.1%) and wooden furniture of the type used in the dining rooms and liv- ing rooms (-4.1%). Despite the declarations of producers about the ever-growing demand for employ- ees, we can only observe a slight increase in average employment in the furniture indus- try. In the first quarter of 2019, 163 thou- sand people were employed in the furniture industry (excluding micro companies). And in the same period last year the number was 162 thousandwhich gives an increase of just 0.9%. The ‘average employment’ present- ed in the table is the annual average of in- dividual months and does not include own- ers and co-owners as well as working family members. The data also exclude those em- ployed outside the country and employed in social and political organizations, trade unions and others. Average employment rates include persons employed on the ba- sis of full-time and part-time employment – converted into full-time employees. If we add owners, co-owners and working family members, the number of employed would exceed 200 thousand people. Increasing the average salary among employees of the furniture industry bymore The situation is good, but challenges are growing In 2018 the Polish furniture industry reached the level of sold value of 48.1 billion PLN which confirms the previously forecast record and an increase of 6.4% compared to 2017. These data are officially confirmed by the Statistics Poland and refer to the full entity of companies. In 2017, production sold according to the Statistics Poland data was 45.2 billion PLN (6.1% YOY). The B+R Studio estimates that the value of sold production will amount to about 50.5 billion PLN (5.0% YOY) in 2019. Volume of production of selected furniture groups Products III 2019 III 2018 I -III 2019 I-III 2018 (thousands of units) = 100 (thousands of units) = 100 Seating furniture with wooden frame 1,586.0 95.1 4,799.0 99.4 including: seating furniture transformed into sleeping places 310.0 94.8 941.0 101.4 Wooden furniture of the type used in the kitchen 468.0 126.1 1,372.0 127.2 Wooden furniture of the type used in the bedroom 532.0 90.2 1,620.0 93.9 Wooden furniture of the type used in the dining rooms and living rooms 2,680.0 95.5 7,927.0 95.9 Source: The Statistics Poland. Text: Eliza Pokora, Tomasz Wiktorski