Wooden furniture firms full of orders through Q3

HCM City (VNA) – Many enterprises in the wood industry have received enough orders to keep their workers busy throughout the third quarter and even to the end of this year thanks to their quick resumption of production. 

The industry has seen a slight growth in the first quarter, with export revenue of wood and wooden furniture rising 3 percent year on year to 3.94 billion USD.

Nguyen Chanh Phuong, Vice Chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of Ho Chi Minh City (HAWA) said that Vietnamese firms have benefited from free trade agreements such as the EU-Vietnam FTA (EVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which enabled them to expand their market and improve the competitiveness of their products.

The export of wooden furniture to markets covered by the CPTPP has surged, he said, adding that further growth is forecast to continue in the future as many companies are speeding up production to deliver the orders they have received for the second quarter.

Thanks to the CPTPP, Vietnam has enjoyed many advantages in the US, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Korea and Japan, he noted, lauding domestic firms’ efforts to increase added value for their products, form material regions and set up production chains.

If the sector maintains its average export revenue of about 1.5 billion USD per month, its target of 16.5 billion USD for this year is completely reachable, he said.

Duong Thi Minh Tue, Business Manager of Minh Duong Furniture JSC said that along with orders that the firm has received for the third quarter, more are coming in for the fourth quarter of this year.

However, she said that furniture exporters are facing many difficulties, especially high logistics costs.

Bui Thi Thanh An, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)’s Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) said that in order to motivate the sector’s growth, the agency has coordinated with other parties to implement many trade promotion activities to help local firms access more markets and service supply sources.

Amid impacts from the fluctuations in input costs on the wood sector, a project to boost the sustainable and effective growth of the sector in the 2021-2030 period was approved in March, which sets a target of bringing Vietnam’s exports of wood and wooden products to 18.5 billion USD in 2025 and 20.4 billion USD in 2030.

The 2021-2030 project on the wood processing industry’s sustainable development aims to turn the sector into a key economic industry and promote the trademark of Vietnamese wood products domestically and internationally.

All wood and wooden products for export and domestic consumption are expected to source from legal wood materials with sustainable forest management certification.

Toward these targets, a key task of the project is to develop infrastructure and expand production scale. As such, it will work to form five high-tech forestry areas, attracting investment from wood processors and auxiliary materials producers. It also eyes the building of a national furniture exhibition centre and encourages the establishment of centres for research and design of wood products catering to consumers’ demand.

Another task is to develop groups of products with competitive advantages, value added, and high and stable demand in the market. Those prioritised for production include furniture, outdoor furniture, and artificial wood plank products, among others.

The project is expected to create optimal conditions for the sector to further expand in the future./.