Stone market in UK

You will be able to see some of the ways the Italians are doing that at the Natural Stone Show in the Marmomacc Meets Design feature. They are using their sophistication in design and production to create intricate stone products rather than the more prosaic polished slab, tiles, hard landscaping and memorials that tend to be bought from Asia.


The Italians have certainly increased the price of the products they are selling to the UK. The average price of imports from Italy last year was ￡990 a tonne, compared with an average price from China of ￡298 a tonne and from India of ￡223 a tonne. That probably explains why stone imports from Italy fell by about 40 last year, according to the figures compiled by HM Revenue & Customs.


While most stone used in the UK?for most purposes these days is imported, there remain about 300 active quarries run by about 200 operators producing dimensional stone in the UK.


The UK has practically no marble and there is not much granite being extracted these days because it cannot compete with the prices of Asian imports, but the UK does have a good selection of limestone, sandstones and slates that are used for building, interiors and hard landscaping.


The dimensional stone production industry in the UK is so small that it is considered too commercially sensitive to produce figures about the industry. However, the producers report reasonable strength of demand for their products.


Walling for housing developments has fallen in line with the collapse of house building in general, but where projects are still going ahead the weakness of sterling is making UK stone more competitive against imports. There was more British stone than ever before being exhibited at the Natural Stone Show this year.

Category: Global Trade

Updated: 2013/9/20

Source: