Furniture manufacturers’ optimism improves despite fall in orders

4th March | manufacturing | A balance of -73% of British furniture manufacturers saw a fall in orders in the four months to February 2009, and a balance of -85% have seen profit margins drop during the same period.

According to the Association of British Furniture Manufacturers’ (BFM) State of Trade Survey, more than half of furniture manufacturers in the UK have been on short time working in the past four months (56%) and a similar number (54%) expect this to continue until the summer.

However, optimism among manufacturers has improved. A balance of -52% of suppliers are optimistic about the general business situation, an improvement on the -76% recorded by BFM in October of last year.

37% of firms have made redundancies in the past four months, up from 35% in the four months to October 2008, but this situation is expected to improve between now and June. 19% of firms expect to make people redundant in the next four months.

• All of the data from the February State of Trade Survey will be available for download from the Furnishing Report email newsletter on Thursday 5th March. Sign up here if you don't yet receive this free service

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