In the world market, the United States shapes up as the nation with the biggest appetite for natural stone – and, in 2008, the country went on a crash diet.

Shipment of stone to the United States began to drop in 2007 ( Stone Business July 2008), but every major stone category showed losses at U.S. ports-of-entry last year. As a result, the total value for all stone imports declined for the first time in this century.

A funny thing happened on the way to a down year for stone imports, though; the decline in import tonnage didn’t fall as much as the equivalent value-per-ton in several stone categories from different countries. Some trading partners chose to ship large amounts of stone to the United States, especially in the second half of 2008, and slash the value to keep materials moving.

The result is a continual decline in stone-import figures for the first months of this year. Stone isn’t moving fast into the United States because there’s already more than enough supply from current stocks in stoneyards.

That means that, as business picks up, the U.S. stone industry will burn off plenty of excess inventory first before requiring large growth in imports. The turnaround in U.S. import-stone numbers may well happen after any economic recovery takes hold.

YEAR-END FALL-OFF

When compared to other U.S. industries, the dimensional stone trade often gets tagged with some less-than-appealing descriptions such as chaotic and unsophisticated. Don’t take it personally; the terms denote a market going through plenty of change, and a manufacturing/sales channel that’s hard (if not impossible) to measure accurately.

That’s where the stone-import data for the U.S. market came into play. At least 80 percent of total U.S. dimensional-stone usage involves foreign stone; the import data from the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. Customs Bureau, as a result, offered a reasonable annual snapshot of stone demand and base values.