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climbed to the highest of 425 million square metres in 2019 of the wood flooring industry itself the overall share of
and fell to the lowest of 322 million square metres in 2023. the floor paving materials market at home and abroad is
The volume of laminate wood flooring and solid wood facing a crisis of decline.
flooring sales experienced a steep declining trend but sales • Sales of wood flooring are becoming more and more

of solid wood composite flooring increased steadily and the difficult as products and services do not effectively
sales of bamboo flooring remained stable. At present there meet market demand. The urgent need is to change
are more than 93 national standards and industry standards from product oriented to user experience oriented, the
closely related to wood flooring covering product testing implementation of demand driven, "can let consumers
methods, safety and environmental protection, services and in the use of products or services to be met" as the
supporting facilities, equipment and raw materials, grade standard for enterprise transformation and upgrading.
and evaluation.
Currently, mechanisation, automation and digitalisation by Thriving timber industry in Heze City
enterprises coexist but their development is unbalanced in As of June 2024 there were 7,716 wood processing enterprises

different regions and different enterprises. The wood flooring in Heze City of Shandong Province, the annual processing
industry is shifting from product driven to innovation and volume of wood reaches 31 million cubic metres, the output
data-driven. value of wood processing is more than RMB110 billion in 2023.
Many wood flooring companies have set up technology There are more than one million employees and its wood
centres, R & D centres or research institutes, conducting products are exported to more than 100 countries and regions.
research and development mainly around innovative floor Exported products cover medium and high-density fibreboard,
connection methods, innovative substrates or surface decoration furniture and wood floors and wooden crafts.

materials, optimising product structure, upgrading product Statistics shows that in the first quarter of 2024 there
performance and enriching product functions. were 789 wood processing enterprises with output value
The number of authorised invention patents in wood of RMB20 million or more in Heze City, an increase of 170
flooring industry reached 514 in 2023. New products such enterprises compared with August 2023, accounting for 28
as solid wood floors for floor heating, impregnated paper percent of the city's industrial enterprises.
veneer solid wood composite floors, stone-wood plastic floors, The revenue was RMB17.89 billion and the profit was
reconstituted bamboo floors, moisture-proof laminate floors RMB1.42 billion, up 15 percent and 31 percent year-on-year.
are popular in domestic and foreign markets.

Existing difficulties in the wood flooring industry Freerange Stock
• With the rise of labour costs and product homogenisation
it is hard to get out of the middle and low-end market
for wood floors.
• With the rise of foreign trade protectionism and the
evolution of domestic market demand China’s wood
flooring is facing the situation of declining competitive

advantage and brand advantage.
• Due to the vicious competition and lack of innovation