Last year got off to a good start in the UK stone industry, continuing the exceptional growth that started in 1996 and had continued on a general sharp upwards trend ever since. However, as the year progressed the reality of the recession started to bite and the graph on the right shows what happened to imports of stone as the year went on.

 

Imports account for the majority of stone sales in the UK. The indigenous stone quarrying industry is so small that no accurate figures for extraction of dimensional stone exist. Anecdotally, sales of British stone were pulled along with the general increase in demand for stone in Britain throughout the second half of the 1990s and into the new millennium.

 

Leading the growth in stone sales were the interiors market (especially granite and latterly engineered quartz worktops) and hard landscaping. Both benefited from the falling price of granite thanks to the growth of imports from first India and then China and the falling price of diamond tools to process granite.

 

Today, granite worktops are familiar sites in domestic and commercial kitchens and serveries in the UK and granite, sandstone and other stones (notably porphyry and some limestone) are the preferred choices of hard landscapers.

 

In other sectors the demand for stone also grew. An increasing number of houses were built with stone walls, particularly in those areas of Britain that traditionally built of stone C the villages of The Cotswolds, Yorkshire, central southern England, Scotland and parts of Wales. Stone fireplaces were installed and stone floors in reception areas and kitchens in particular, but not exclusively. Latterly, underfloor heating has increased the attraction of stone flooring in living areas. England has always had a lot of conservatories added to houses as a home improvement and with underfloor heating the attraction of natural stone flooring in conservatories has increased.

 

Hotels have been refurbished using marble and polished limestone for bathrooms and many offices have used marble, granite, limestone and other decorative stones for floors, wall linings, reception desks, stairs, lift surrounds and other public areas, as well as for cladding for the outer skin of the building.

 

The aesthetic for the natural beauty of stone has pervaded most areas of society in Britain and has been used in ever more interesting and intricate ways as the CNC technology for working stone has improved and become more affordable. Even waterjet cutting, which has not made a big impact on the British market, is beginning to be used for creating intricate patters, especially on flooring and paving.

 

The past 12 years have been a heady time for the growth of the stone market in the UK that has benefited the whole industry and seen a lot of new companies entering the market.

 

With the recession, some companies have already failed. Some of the smaller companies that needed to keep machinery working in order to pay off the loans that had financed them have already gone bankrupt. But it is not only small companies. Larger companies geared up to keeping a large workforce employed have also run out of money. It is a problem that has been exacerbated from the start of 2009 in particular by the banks withdrawing or reducing overdraft and factoring facilities and failing to lend for future development that would improve efficiency, worsening cash flow problems for companies already finding it harder to get paid by their customers.

 

There is a feeling in the stone industry in the UK that the recession is worse than it needs to be because television and newspaper reporters have emphasised the gloom and led to people expecting a recession. Consequently they have reduced their spending and investment, so worsening the conditions that create the recession. It has been said in the UK that it is no longer prices that are guiding the invisible hand of the market but Press reports.

 

As for the future: who knows? Just lately the BBC seems to have started reporting signs of recovery and if that creates rational expectations in the market of recovery, no doubt there will be one. Certainly in the stone industry the New Year deep gloom seems to be giving way to a greater level of optimism as it no longer seems as if the end of the world is nigh and orders start to pick up.