What are for some defects, the veins and the irregularities in natural stone (but which form its very essence) is in reality a design that nature has gifted us and which makes every slab of stone unique. If to this uniqueness that has been given to us we add the hand of man and his aesthetic criteria when playing with these designs and combining them with the style that we denominate "bookmatching", the result is a real work of art.

The Association of Businessmen of Marble from Andalucía has announced the MACAEL AWARDS, now in its XX1X edition. The projects in natural stone that have resulted winners in 2015 are the following:

 Richard Watzke info@richardwatzke.de

The export statistics for natural stone to USA during 2014 reveal a disturbing trend when analysed in some detail. During the 2014 the US economy had already more or less recovered from the severe financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 and, for many businessmen in the industry it was almost back to normal. Anecdotal evidence suggests most of the wholesalers were seeing growth in their business, on average, to the extent of 20%, though the figure quoted offhand  obviously varied from person to person and company to company.

At the beginning of the year experts predicted new housing starts as high as 1.5 million, giving support to the builder´s confidence levels.

Ornamental stones are usually associated with only a few well known countries, even though there are surely many other countries where commercially viable natural stone is found.  This article highlights the current state of the development of the stone industry in Togo.

 EXPORTS

IMPORTS

The German Natural Stone Award is endowed with € 15000 and was awarded to the winner of category A - “Public and commercial buildings”.

Exports

In the year 2014 the Brazilian exports of ornamental stone and cladding reached 1.276 billion US$, corresponding to physical volume of almost 2.5 million tons. Processed stone consisted of almost 80% of sales and more than half of the total physical volume exported. Rough stone, on its part, represented 20.69% of sales and 48.84% of total physical volume exported.