China is one of the world's major producers and exporters of wood-based panels and has an important position in the global market. China mainly imports and exports three major categories of wood-based panel products: particleboard, fiberboard and plywood.

Among them, particle board can be widely used in furniture manufacturing, decoration industry, packaging materials and flooring industry and other fields. Particleboard has lower cost, greater strength, uniform structure, excellent processing performance, generally can be used to process large format panels, very close to the use of customized home needs.

Import market in 2022 shows volume and price increase trend

According to the statistics, China's particleboard imports in 2022 was 775,200 tons, an increase of 5.44% over the previous year; the import amount of $ 410 million, an increase of 26.93% over the previous year.

Comprehensive analysis, China's particleboard in 2022 showed an increase in import volume and import amount, and the increase in import amount exceeded the import volume.

At the end of 2022, the country's 295 particleboard producers retained 314 particleboard production lines, distributed in 22 provinces and municipalities, with a total production capacity of 41.48 million cubic meters per year, a net increase in production capacity of 2.53 million cubic meters per year, an increase of 6.5%.

Exports slipped 4% in the first half of this year, and U.S. demand continued to fall

China's customs data show that particleboard exports in the first half of 2023 fell 4% to 188,000 tons, valued at $143 million, down 34% from the same period in 2022.China's particleboard exports in 2022 were 369,300 tons, down 35.61% from the previous year, and the value of the exports was $389 million, a drop of 8.90% from the previous year.

China's Taiwan port was the largest destination for China's particleboard exports, with exports to China's Taiwan region increasing by 24% to 42,000 tons in the first half of 2023. Meanwhile, China's particleboard exports to Saudi Arabia, Chile, Malaysia and Indonesia increased by 71%, 98%, 48% and 8% respectively compared to the same period in 2022.

The US is no longer the largest market for China's particleboard exports, with exports falling 23% year-on-year in H1 2023. China's particleboard exports to the US fell 51% year-on-year to 10,352 tons in 2022.

As early as the second half of last year, U.S. particleboard demand had already slowed down. Back in 2021 and the first half of 2022, U.S. oriented strand board producers were incredibly profitable and had achieved record financial results. However, with the multiple challenges of changing energy and raw material prices and inflation, coupled with a weakening economic environment and geopolitical influences such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, demand for the oriented strand board market has inevitably suffered a decline.

Current status of particleboard development

China's particleboard imports and imports were higher than the amount of exports and exports, is one of the few man-made boards in the category of trade deficit products, and particleboard products of all types of average export unit price is higher than the average import unit price.

In the past 10 years, China's average annual imports of particleboard experienced two big growth, the average annual imports from 2017 to 2022 is basically stable at 700,000 tons, about 1.08 million cubic meters, the average annual imports are less than 3% of China's production. China's particleboard exports for many consecutive years with an average annual export volume of about 200,000 tons, to 2021 exports surged to 573,500 tons, but in 2022 China's particleboard exports returned to rational growth, 369,300 tons, compared with 2020 before the growth trend is still present.

The decline in imports, on the one hand, with China's new high-quality particleboard production line in the past two years increased significantly, on the other hand, the new crown epidemic during the European and American countries such as home decoration and building materials industry is exceptionally hot, the foreign market for particleboard consumer demand surge, product demand exceeds supply, particleboard prices, but also affects China's imports of particleboard.