After exporting billions of dollars in January, wooden furniture businesses have orders until April, some until September with optimistic forecasts.
"We just got a big order to export 600 prefabricated wooden houses to Hawaii," said Mr. Vo Xuan Thuyen, CEO of Tran Duc Homes. With a factory in Binh Duong, his company is fully booked with prefabricated wooden house orders until June.
"The US and Canadian markets are promising because they are fertile land. In Canada, the demand for housing is very high," he assessed. In addition to prefabricated wooden houses, the company's furniture segment exported to the US and Europe is full of orders until September. They are preparing to expand the factory by 12 hectares to receive orders.
According to Chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Processing Association of Ho Chi Minh City (Hawa) Nguyen Quoc Khanh, many companies in the industry have recovered 80-90% and have orders until April-May. The export situation has shown positive signs since the beginning of the year.
Wood and wood products are the only item in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector that brought in more than a billion USD in the first month of 2024, reaching 1.5 billion USD. In the past two months, the export turnover of this sector reached 2.4 billion USD, an increase of nearly 44%.
The positive change comes after the industry exported 14.3 billion USD last year, down 15.8% compared to 2022 and failed to reach the target of 17.5 billion USD. This year, the wood industry reset this target in the context of businesses and experts being more optimistic, especially the US market, which accounts for more than half of the turnover.
According to Mr. Nguyen Chanh Phuong, Director of Danh Moc Company, Vice President of Hawa, interest rates in the US are flat and tending to decrease, helping mortgage interest rates cool down, contributing to the warming of real estate. "This is a good sign for furniture. If there are no major geopolitical fluctuations, the export market will increase well in April-May," he predicted.
Previously, at the end of last year, Mr. Trinh Huu Kien, General Director of KES Group, specializing in manufacturing industrial wood panels in Binh Phuoc, also expected that in 2024, if inflation in the US cools down, the market will be more promising. Each month, this group exports an average of about 200 containers to the US, mainly industrial wood flooring and wooden souvenirs.
In addition, some other markets are also promising. Europe emerged as a bright spot early this year. For example, exports to the Netherlands in January nearly doubled. Or the Indian market increased 250% last year but is strict on prices. The Middle East is attractive if businesses have products that suit their tastes and have good relationships.
To take advantage of the recovery, businesses are accelerating marketing and strengthening design capabilities. HawaExpo 2024 - Vietnam's largest furniture and wood products export association, taking place next week, will have two exhibition locations in District 7 and Thu Duc City (HCMC) because "there are a lot of businesses registering".
A booth at HawaExpo 2023. Photo: Hawa
The organizers said that this year's event is three times larger than in 2023, gathering more than 500 businesses, with more than 80% of them produced domestically. The venue in Thu Duc City will specialize in introducing breakthrough designs from furniture - accessories - materials brands, building a community of talented designers.
"Compromising with the title of international processing factory is a mindset that needs to be discarded. Therefore, taking advantage of the time when Vietnam is attracting global attention with a series of new factories starting construction this year, we want to show off the current capacity of the industry," said Mr. Nguyen Quoc Khanh.
Businesses realize that maintaining a fixed customer group, focusing on outsourcing or specializing in a single sales channel is tying themselves up. "We are no longer in the outsourcing era, but must increase our brainpower," said Mr. Dang Ang, Representative of Asahi, a Japanese enterprise with a factory in Vietnam.
For his part, Mr. Vo Xuan Thuyen of Tran Duc Homes also revealed that it was not overnight that he began to reap the sweet fruits of the prefabricated wooden house segment. "No one has ever thought of bringing a house from Vietnam to the US for assembly. Actually, it has not been just a year or two, but we have been thinking about it for 11 years and preparing steps to meet the difficult standards of this market," he said.
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