January 18, 2007 | Recommend this Article »

World power Brazil

Natural stone extraction doubled

Brazil is indisputably a world power in today’s natural stone sector. Between 2000 and 2005, Brazil exactly doubled its extraction of natural stone from 2.25 million cubic metres to 4.50 million cubic metres. In terms of volume, this increased its share of global rough block production from 3.8 to 5.3 per cent.
Brazil has expanded its position as producer of finished products and as exporter even more clearly. Together with China, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Portugal, Brazil is meanwhile one of the »G-7 natural stone exporters«. The production of finished products rose from 0.85 million tons to 2.04 million tons between 2000 and 2005 and the present trend clearly indicates high growth rates in the coming years, too. More than half of production is meanwhile exported.

Dependent on US market

Brazilian exports of finished natural stone products are extremely heavily geared to the North American market, and it could even be said that the industry is currently completely at the mercy of the US building sector and a continuing natural stone boom in this country. Almost 80 per cent of the total 767000 tons of Brazilian exports of finished products in 2005 went to the United States. Although Germany crops up in the statistics as fourth most important customer after Canada and Spain, exports to countries outside the North American continent play a clearly subordinate role.

In terms of weight, around half of Brazilian natural stone exports, namely 1.06 million tons, are accounted for by rough blocks, practically exclusively of granite. The picture for customers of raw goods is distinctly different. Over one third of these goods are exported to China and more than a quarter to Italy. Other major customers are processing works in Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Belgium and France. In contrast, Germany purchased just 2000 tons of rough blocks from Brazil in 2005.

One sixth of slate trade

Brazil not only plays a major role in granite production, but in slate production, too. The country exported 203000 tons or almost one sixth of total world trade in slate in 2005. This quantity puts Brazil well behind Spain (632000 tons), but just as clearly ahead of other important slate producers like India (111000 tons) or China (103000 tons).
The most important buyer of Brazilian slate in 2005 was again the USA (44000 tons), followed by Great Britain (36000 tons), Spain (21000 tons), Germany (11000 tons) and Italy (10000 tons).