The crisis in the furniture industry is deepening

The difficult situation in the furniture industry is not improving.

From 2022, the situation of the furniture industry is systematically deteriorating. This was influenced by many factors, primarily: the outbreak of war on our eastern border, the growing level of inflation, rising prices of raw materials and difficulties in obtaining them, increased costs of running a business and the decision of the State Forests to resign from wood certification in the FSC standard. Industry representatives hoped that the situation would improve in 2024. The basis for drawing such conclusions was the observed decline in inflation and the establishment of a working team that started talks with the State Forests regarding the restoration of international wood certification. Representatives of the Polish Chamber of Commerce of Furniture Manufacturers point out that this initial optimism is unfounded. They indicate that maintaining the already low levels of sales, exports and employment from last year will be extremely difficult. They forecast declines of several percent in the first two categories indicated. In this way, they estimate sales at PLN 62 million (compared to PLN 64 million in 2023), exports at PLN 60 million (compared to PLN 62.3 million last year) and a reduction of 10,000 jobs (compared to 18,000 from 2023) with the indication that 5,000 people have probably lost their jobs so far.

It is worth recalling that we have discussed the problems faced by representatives of the furniture industry many times. They became the subject of discussion during episode 4 of the ResTrue Talks podcast. We have also subjected them to an in-depth analysis in the ResTrue Report 2023: Restructuring and bankruptcy in Poland, which can be downloaded from the main page of the Restructuring Website.

Source: https://www.pb.pl/klody-pod-nogami-polskich-mebli-1214959