With a significant decline in the market demand, the performance of Zibo producing areas is still very stable while some production lines have to be stopped in other areas. Industry analysts say, on one hand, Zibo ceramic enterprises focus on expanding foreign markets in recent years, exports account for a very important share of sales in the sluggish domestic market; on the other, Zibo ceramic products gain further recognition and expand the market share gradually because of cost advantage with the widespread use of inkjet printing machine. 

It is understood that, both the volume and the prices of exported ceramic tiles are going down this year, meanwhile, Shandong Province enjoys 21.36% ceramic export growth (13.4% last year) with an export value of 65.35 million U.S. dollars; Shandong ranks 3 nationally, whose export accounts for 4.25% of total Chinese ceramic export.

Since 2008, in Zibo building ceramic industry, manufacturers with low-end production capacity have been continuously eliminated and the production lines have been limited to a certain amount. In addition, the whole production volume of an enterprise in Zibo is not large because each enterprise owns 2 or 3 production lines, a single of which has a relatively small production capacity.

Moreover, Zibo ceramic industry has put greater efforts into brand-building, and famous brands like Gold Lion King Ceramics, Dahua Ceramics, Yadi Ceramics, Tongyi Ceramics, Lion King Ceramics have put more efforts to build terminal stores. Take Lion King Ceramics for example, nearly a hundred stores have been added this year, which improves the sales of ceramic products to some extent, so enterprises and production lines have been working stably in Zibo by far.

Editor Li Xiaojuan, Deng Shiya

This is the 19th issue.