Markets and Industry

Russian stone market in 2017

1) The Russian natural stone market has become very price sensitive now, and except for the premium private homes segment of the market, buyers now looks around for the lowest price. The devaluation of the rouble has made imported stone much more expensive. Before the economic slowdown in 2014, the strong rouble and a fast growing economy meant that there was a market for natural stone in all different price segments.

A new marble industry in India

In the month of September, 2016 the Indian Government announced a new  policy for the import of marble blocks which has far reaching consequences for the development of the marble industry in India. The new liberalised policy, while still maintaining high import duties, at last made it easy for anyone setting up a factory to import marble blocks.

Finland granite industry

The Nordic countries, small though they may be in terms of population, they do have an interesting range of natural stone deposits, some of which are actually well known in the international markets. This article highlights the granites of Finland.
 
 
If Norway is generally associated with the blue granites, the colour that is most associated with Finnish granite industry is brown and, to a certain extent, the red colour. Every quarry company in Finland usually has the brown granite among the product mix.

Natural Stone market trends in Germany in 2016

With all the daily talk of economic crisis all over the world, the high level of indebtedness, unemployment, slow economic growth, it is easy to forget there are markets which are actually doing quite well in the natural stone industry. We do not refer to a relatively small emerging market which has been growing impressively for about 5 years and which is catching the eye of the world. We refer here to no less than Germany, a country of 80 million people and with as solid an economy as is possible in these current times.