The European Union (EU) produced candles worth €1 522 million in 2019. This represented a 6% increase in the value of the EU’s candle production compared with 2013.
Poland was the EU’s biggest candle producer, accounting for €617 million worth (41%) of all candles produced in the EU in 2019, followed by Italy (€149 million or 10% of candles) and Germany (€143 million or 9% of candles).
Source dataset: DS-066341
In terms of trade, the EU Member States imported candles worth €1 332 million in 2019, three quarters of which came from other EU Member States (€1 004 million). The value of total candle imports of the EU Member States increased 20% compared with 2013.
In 2019, €1 449 million of candles were exported by the EU Member States, the vast majority of which went to other EU Member States (77%, or €1 119 million). This represents a 22% increase in the value of EU Member States’ total exports compared with 2013.
Over a quarter of the candles imported to Germany
Germany imported €363 million worth of candles in 2019, representing 27% of total imports of candles by value. This makes Germany the largest EU importer of candles, ahead of the Netherlands (€181 million, 14%) and France (€110 million, 8%), followed by Belgium (€92 million, 7%) and Austria (€80 million, 6%).
China - main origin of imported candles
Imports of candles from non-EU countries came mainly from China (€183 million, or 56% of extra-EU imports of candles), followed by the United Kingdom (€66 million, 20%) and the United States (€36 million, 11%).
Source dataset: DS-645593
Over a third of EU candles exported from Poland
Among EU Member States, Poland exported candles worth €545 million in 2019 (38% of total exports of candles by value). This makes Poland the largest EU exporter of candles, ahead of the Netherlands (€198 million, 14%) and Germany (€143 million, 10%), followed by Belgium (€111 million, 8%) and Czechia (€89 million, 6%).
United Kingdom - main destination for exported candles
Almost half of EU candle exports went to the United Kingdom (€151 million, or 46% of extra-EU exports of candles). The rest of the EU candle exports went mainly to Switzerland (€41 million, 13%), Norway (€39 million, 12%) and the United States (€31 million, 9%).
Notes:
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
- Production data: The sampling frame of the survey includes all enterprises, authorities and organisations that carry out any target industrial activity and have 20 employees or more.
- Trade data: Due to quasi-transit trade, the adding of intra-EU trade and extra-EU trade may lead to double counting. An example of this would be candles imported from China via the Netherlands, where they are cleared by customs for free circulation, before being dispatched to Germany. This would lead to the same candles being counted as imports by both the Netherlands and Germany. More precisely, they would appear in the Netherlands' extra-EU imports from China and intra-EU exports to Germany and in Germany's intra-EU imports from the Netherlands.
- The EU27 data reflect the political change in the EU composition so the UK is considered as an extra-EU partner country for the EU27. However, the UK is still part of the internal market until the end of the transitory period, meaning that data on trade with the UK are still based on statistical concepts applicable to trade between the EU Member States. As a consequence, while imports from any other extra-EU27 trade partner are grouped by country of origin, the UK data reflect country of consignment. In practice this means that the goods imported by the EU27 from the UK were physically transported from the UK but part of these goods could have been of other origin than the UK. For this reason data on trade with the UK are not fully comparable with data on trade with other extra-EU27 trade partners.
This news is published on the occasion of All Saints' Day (1 November).
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