Vietnam built its tile industry for a boom. Capacity ran to more than 800 million square metres a year — comfortably ahead of what the country actually produced even in good years — and the kilns were sized for a demand curve that kept bending upward. In 2025 the curve flattened. Exports softened, some lines went cold, and a sector built for expansion found itself managing the opposite. This issue reports that from where it is actually visible: the factory cluster, not the spreadsheet.

A kiln business, in an energy year

Tile is, before it is anything else, an energy business. Bodies are pressed and then fired — twice, often — and the kiln runs on gas and power that a factory cannot switch off cheaply. When energy costs rise, the economics invert fast: the thinnest-margin lines are the first to idle, because the cost of firing them past a certain point exceeds what the finished square metre will fetch.

That is the mechanism behind a good part of the 2025 softening. It is not that Vietnam forgot how to make tile, or that the factories closed. It is that a capacity-heavy industry met a higher energy bill and a cooler market at the same time, and the arithmetic told a share of the kilns to wait.

Where you can see it: the Red River Delta

The cooling is not evenly spread, because the industry isn't. Vietnam's tile capacity concentrates in the Red River Delta cluster — Vinh Phuc, Bac Ninh and neighbouring provinces — near the clay and the power that a kiln needs. Stand in that cluster and a demand dip is legible before it reaches any published figure: lines running fewer shifts, finished stock stacked longer, sales teams that pick up the phone faster than they did a year ago.

That last detail is the one a buyer should notice, because it is the whole point of the issue.

A slump is leverage

A cooling market is a bad headline and a good negotiating position, and the two facts are the same fact. A factory carrying idle capacity has a powerful reason to want your committed export order, and it will pay for that commitment in the three currencies that matter:

  • Price — a line that would otherwise sit cold is worth running at a keener number.
  • Lead time — spare capacity is spare time; your order isn't queuing behind a full book.
  • Overage and flexibility — a factory short of work is more willing to hold safety stock, absorb a reasonable overage, and accommodate a spec change.

This is the same logic Issue 1 drew on the tariff side and Issue 3 drew on the wood side: read the market's weather, and price to it. A capacity surplus is structural buyer leverage, and 2025 deepened it. Our full ceramic-tile capacity and export note carries the underlying figures.

The honesty note this issue needs

Tile is also where we have to be most careful with our own numbers. Some 2025 tile export figures are estimated or partly redacted in the underlying trade data — a normal feature of how shipment statistics are compiled and released, but a real limit on precision. So this issue ships with its uncertainty on the surface rather than smoothed away: the direction (a capacity-heavy sector softening into an energy-cost year) is well supported; the exact magnitude of the export decline is not something to quote to the decimal. A slump you can act on does not require a false precision to be real.

The next issue turns the lens around — from what Vietnam exports to what Vietnam is building for itself, and the materials demand behind it: Building the Airport.

Sources & data notes

Tile capacity (more than 800 million square metres a year, running ahead of production), the 2025 export softening, energy cost as the swing factor, and the concentration of capacity in the Red River Delta (Vinh Phuc, Bac Ninh) are drawn from 2023–2025 industry and trade reporting and our own cluster note. Some 2025 tile export figures are estimated or partly redacted in the source trade data; treat the direction as well supported and the exact magnitude as approximate. Figures are indicative and for orientation only.

Buying tile into a soft market and want to turn the slump into terms? Send us one BOM and the tile lines come back priced to the current weather — with the capacity leverage used on your behalf — inside 48 hours. Our own fiber-cement line, DURAGREEN®, is sourced under the same read-the-market discipline.