A few days ago, "Ceramic World Review" magazine cooperated with MECS to release key data on the world's leading architectural ceramics manufacturers as of the end of 2021, excluding China, and sorted them by known output. According to the ranking, the top three global ceramic tile manufacturers in 2021 are Mohawk Industries Industrial Group in the United States, Lamosa Group in Mexico, and SCG Ceramics in Thailand. The ceramic tile output is 250 million square meters, 197 million square meters, and 139 million square meters respectively.
Chart source: "Ceramic Information"
It is worth noting that the survey is not exhaustive due to the lack of data from China’s leading architectural ceramics companies, Italy’s Concorde Group, Egypt’s Cleopatra, Keda Africa Company Twyford, etc. From the perspective of output, the ceramic enterprise ranked first on the list has an annual tile output of 250 million square meters. Ceramic enterprises with an annual production capacity of 50 million square meters and an annual output of more than 41 million square meters can be shortlisted. Public information shows that Marco Polo and New Pearl, two of China's leading ceramic construction companies, both have an annual output of nearly 200 million square meters, and are fully qualified to be included in the list.
Some industry insiders said that in addition to Marco Polo and New Pearl, there are more than a dozen domestic ceramic companies that have the potential to be shortlisted.
Top 25 global ceramic tile manufacturers
How do Chinese ceramics companies rank?
It is understood that "Ceramic World Review" follows the world ceramic tile production ranking released in cooperation with MECS. Its data is as of December 31, 2021. Except for a few obtained or estimated from public sources, most of them are provided directly by the companies themselves. . As mentioned earlier, the list is not exhaustive, lacks data on some companies, and is not included in Chinese ceramic companies. So, if the ceramic tile production data of China Ceramics Enterprises is included, what will happen to the ranking of this list?
According to the financial report data of listed companies in 2021 (including data disclosed by companies preparing to go public), the annual ceramic tile production data of Chinese ceramic companies such as Marco Polo, New Pearl, Dongpeng, Mona Lisa, Oceano, and Keda Manufacturing As follows:
Comparing the annual ceramic tile production data of China's leading ceramic companies and global ceramic tile manufacturers, it is obvious that there are a total of 6 manufacturing companies: Marco Polo, New Pearl, Dongpeng, Mona Lisa, Oceano, and Keda.Chinese ceramic companies can enter the top 10 of this list. Therefore, if Chinese ceramic companies are added, the world ceramic tile production ranking will change significantly:
In terms of annual output of ceramic tiles, China's six leading ceramic companies Marco Polo, New Pearl, Dongpeng, Mona Lisa, Oceano, and Keda Manufacturing ranked third, fourth, eighth, and fourth respectively on the list. Sixth, seventh, thirteenth.
In fact, according to the standard of the annual ceramic tile output of 41 million square meters, in addition to the above 6 companies, there are a group of "large production capacity" companies in my country's building ceramics industry that have the strength to be shortlisted, including Shuncheng, Hongyu, Haosheng, Xinjincheng, Xinzhongyuan, Quansheng, Xuri (White Rabbit Ceramics), Nobel, Jiangxi Asus Group, Jiangxi Sun Enterprise, Jiangxi Ruiyang Group, Guangxi Xinquan Industry Enterprise, etc.
China VS Overseas
Revenue and profit PK of ceramic tile production companies
Relevant data shows that in 2021, the output of the world's leading architectural ceramics companies has basically returned to pre-epidemic levels, and some companies have expanded their production capacity through mergers and acquisitions, production and other methods. For example, the American Mohawk Industries Group will still rank first among global ceramic tile manufacturers in 2021. On June 3, 2022, the group completed the acquisition of the Mexican company Vitromex. It is expected that Mohawk Industries will continue to maintain the top spot in 2022. In addition, many leading overseas ceramic tile manufacturers such as Lamosa in Mexico, PAMESA in Spain, and Ceramica Carmelo Flor in Brazil have expanded their ceramic tile production.
In addition to providing the output and production capacity data of global ceramic tile manufacturers, the list also reveals the 2021 ceramic tile revenue and production capacity distribution of these companies. Based on the 2021 annual report data of 13 major overseas ceramic tile listed companies released by the China Building and Sanitary Ceramics Association in March this year, Zhongtaojun statistics compared the 2021 revenue and profits of Chinese building ceramics companies and overseas ceramic tile production companies.
In terms of corporate net profits, the top three global ceramic tile manufacturers in 2021 are Thailand's SCG, the United States' Mohawk and Marco Polo, with net profits of 9.011 billion yuan, 6.561 billion yuan, and 1.653 billion yuan respectively. Overall, the net profit margin of overseas ceramic tile manufacturers is higher than that of Chinese ceramic companies, which shows that overseas ceramic tile manufacturers are more profitable than Chinese ceramic companies. However, China also has a "top student", that is Marco Polo, whose net profit margin of 17.65% is the highest among the top three, second only to Thailand DYNASTY’s 20.29%.
The previous analysis was about the overall revenue and profit of Chinese and overseas ceramic tile manufacturers. So, in terms of the revenue and profit of the ceramic tile sector, what will be the ranking of Chinese ceramic companies? Zhongtaojun ranked global ceramic tile manufacturers based on their ceramic tile segment revenue. The top 10 list is as follows:
Obviously, Chinese ceramic companies have performed very well in this list. Five leading Chinese ceramic companies, including Marco Polo, New Pearl, Mona Lisa, Dongpeng and Oceano, have all been shortlisted, ranking No. 1 respectively. Two, third, fourth, fifth, seventh. However, compared with the 24.877 billion yuan in tile revenue of Mohawk, the world's leading ceramic tile company, Chinese ceramic companies still need to continue to work hard.
China’s ceramic construction companies lack globalization
Consumer "origin disputes" need to be resolved
In the world ceramic tile production ranking list jointly released by "Ceramic World Review" and MECS, we can also find that most of the production lines of excellent companies are distributed around the world. For example, Mohawk in the United States has a total of 23 factories in the world, located in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and Russia; LAMOSA in Mexico has 20 factories in the world, located in Mexico (9), Argentina (2), Colombia (2), Peru (3), Brazil (3) and Spain (1); Thailand SCG has 26 factories, located in Thailand (17), Vietnam (7), Indonesia (1 company), Philippines (1 company).
Relatively speaking, most of the production lines of Chinese ceramic companies are built domestically. Leading ceramic companies including New Pearl, Mona Lisa, and Oceano rarely invest in production lines overseas. However, the ceramic machinery manufacturer Keda In manufacturing, we adhere to the globalization strategy and vigorously build factories in Africa and other overseas regions to develop the ceramic tile business.
Why are Chinese construction and ceramics companies not keen on exploring overseas markets? The most fundamental reason is that China's ceramic tile market is huge enough. Statistics show that China has always been the world's largest consumer of ceramic tiles. China's total ceramic tile consumption in 2021 was 8.268 billion square meters, an increase of 5.2% from 7.859 billion square meters in 2020, accounting for 45.4% of the world's total consumption. Half of the global ceramic tile market is in China, soThe huge market is enough to "feed" nearly 10,000 domestic ceramic construction companies. The market is huge and the competition is fierce. For China's leading ceramics companies, they have not yet captured much of the domestic "big cake" and are really unable to develop overseas markets.
So, should Chinese ceramic companies implement a globalization strategy? They should be determined according to their own development direction. There are advantages and disadvantages to corporate globalization, which need to be analyzed in detail. Some people in the industry believe that traditional industries should be globalized. Bian Cheng, chairman of Keda Manufacturing, once said in a media interview, "It is healthy to engage in traditional industries if exports account for 2/3."
However, China's consumption concept of ceramic tiles is quite special. Chinese people pay great attention to the place of origin when buying ceramic tiles. As the first place in China to develop ceramics on a large scale, Foshan has long formed the most complete ceramic industry chain. In addition, Guangdong has obvious advantages in clay resources. Therefore, the quality of ceramic tiles in Guangdong production areas is more stable than those in other production areas. This fact has led many consumers to form a deep-rooted concept in their minds that "Guangdong bricks" are synonymous with high-quality ceramic tiles.
However, with the development of the times, the concentration of China's building ceramics industry has continued to increase. At the same time, the production advantages of Guangdong's production areas have significantly weakened. Large companies and brands have deployed in the national market, and the momentum of expanding production outside Guangdong has been It is unstoppable that fewer and fewer ceramic tiles will be produced in Guangdong, and fewer and fewer Guangdong bricks will be available to consumers. But now, most consumers only recognize Guangdong bricks when buying ceramic tiles. The establishment of factories by leading brands to produce ceramic tiles in production areas outside Guangdong often causes controversy. Consumers and ceramic tile dealers often have disputes over the origin of ceramic tiles.
Therefore, how to get consumers to recognize and accept ceramic tiles that are not produced in Guangdong is an issue that must be paid attention to and faced by ceramic construction companies that have, are building, or plan to build production bases in other provinces.
