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USA:August Wood Flooring Shipments Up Nearly 3%
¡¾2002.09.28¡¿


August Wood Flooring Shipments Up Nearly 3%
HMR Custom News  Sep. 2002 

According to NOFMA: The Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association, manufacturers¡¯ shipments of Solid Wood Flooring reached 53,611,000 board feet in August 2002, outpacing last year¡¯s results for the same month by 1,362,000 board feet for a 2.6 percent gain.

Year to date shipments reported by NOFMA now total 410,474,000 board feet. That figure tops the volume shipped during the first eight months of 2001 by 33,969,000 board feet, which amounts to a full 9 percent gain. Solid Wood Flooring shipments for the last 12 successive months (September 2001 through August 2002) stand at 613,526,000, while shipments for the 2001 calendar year ended at 579,557.

Strong housing construction and remodeling continue to fuel the expansion of Solid Wood Flooring sales. Housing starts slipped in August from the previous month by slightly more than 2 percent, but are 3 percent higher than August 2001. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, neither figure exceeds the margin of error that would indicate definitive change. Building permits are also down from the previous month and up from the same period last year ¨C minus 2.5 percent and plus 3.9 percent respectively. As with housing starts, the numbers are within a range that would indicate no significant change.
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