Ziarul Financiar put Romania second in the world, in the headline. In the body the figure is tighter. UN Comtrade, 2025: almost 75,300 tonnes of PVC joinery, $378 million. Second in the EU by volume, after Poland. Third by value, after Poland and Germany. Among the world’s top five exporters. Second place is in the Union, on tonnes. It is not a global podium on money.

WITS, on the same HS 392520, but for 2024: Romania, 85,868 tonnes, $391 million. Poland, first by a distance. China, second on kilograms. Then Romania, as a country, ahead of Germany on weight, behind it on value. OEC puts Romania’s 2024 exports at $330 million, fourth in the world, Italy $227 million of that. Three bases, two years. The order moves with what you count: tonnes or dollars, EU or world, 2024 or 2025. Anyone who melts them turns Poland into a footnote.

The players, to ZF: twenty years of new halls, automated, certified to European standards. Barrier: delivery in two to three weeks to Italy, Germany, France, the Benelux, at a lower cost. Fluctuating domestic demand pushed them into export. Experience on demanding markets, ties with distributors and installers in the West. That is the industry’s account. It is not a ministry communiqué.

A PVC door and window are not a shop-window glory. They are weight. Poland sells dearer, on the same code. Romania sells cheaper, closer, faster. In 2025 the tonnes fell against 2024, in the tables above. The value, in ZF, stayed around $380 million. Anyone who reads only the headline sees a champion. Anyone who reads the tonnes sees a European second and a place in the world pack.

The export holds if the West buys. If Italy, the first destination in OEC, slows, the halls remain. If domestic demand comes back, export is not a fate, it is a valve. Barrier said it the other way: the wobble at home made the West.

Until the 2026 figures, 75,300 tonnes remain. After that, what remains is whether second in the EU holds on tonnes or moves onto value, where Germany still sits between us and Poland.

Image: Vasyatka1, plastic window-profile factory, Dymer, 21 December 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of a line in Ukraine, not a hall in Romania.

Sources consulted: Romania, 2nd by volume among PVC door and window exporters worldwide — Ziarul Financiar; Doors, windows and their frames and thresholds exports by country, 2024 — WITS / UN Comtrade.