British furniture association BFM expecting cost increases
The association of British Furniture Manufacturers (BFM) believes the bottlenecks that have arisen particularly in the supply of particleboard, MDF, and foam materials in recent weeks will lead to further increases in costs in primary-product purchasing. According to the BFM, the squeezes are occurring above all in coated particleboard and MDF. The back-ground to this is the fact that production in the British furniture industry has been gradually ramped up again in recent months following the lockdown of several weeks in the second quarter.
To achieve this, the supply of wood-based panels has had to be covered above all by new pur-chases as stocks had been depleted relatively heavily beforehand. Particleboard and MDF manufacturers had also reduced their stocks in the second quarter, however, to the extent that they must fulfil new orders mainly from the meanwhile relatively well-utilised production op-erations again. Making this more difficult is the fact that continental European wood-based panel manufacturers have throttled back their deliveries to the UK owing to the brisk demand on their own markets and uncertainties arising from the forth-coming Brexit. Due to these restrictions in supply, deliveries to British furniture manufacturers are meanwhile being carried out by allocation to a large extent.
