August 29, 2005 | Recommend this Article »

How large is the Swiss market?

World’s biggest natural stone consumer in per head terms

According to international statistics, Switzerland is the world’s biggest natural stone consumer – in per head terms. But how large is the Swiss market really? A comparison with Germany.


The »Stone 2004« report published annually in Italy shows that 555,000 t of processed natural stones were placed on the Swiss market in 2003.

If this figure is converted to slabs with an average thickness of 2 cm, this gives a respectable area of 10.27 million m² or 1.45 m² per inhabitant. This makes Switzerland the world leader ahead of Greece (1.37 m²) and Spain (1.25 m²). The corresponding figure for Germany is only 0.54 m². The worldwide figure is 0.14 m² per inhabitant.

»Stone« quotes 400,000 t of rough block production for Switzerland and 700,000 t for Germany.
At least the figure for Switzerland seems a little high. The Swiss consumption is possibly not quite as high as the statistics would have us believe. The fact that it must still be distinctly higher than in Germany is indicated by a comparison of foreign trade for the two countries. These figures are the official government import and export figures, which are collected and analysed centrally by Eurostat. They show that Germany imported 2.478 million t of natural stones (rough and processed) in 2003, whereas approx. eleven times smaller Switzerland – in terms of population – achieved 0.469 million t. For natural stone exports, which play a comparatively minor role for both countries, the corresponding figures are 405,000 t and 59,000 t respectively.

If these figures are converted to a per head figure, it can be seen that Switzerland imports around twice as much as Germany and also exports around twice as much. So Switzerland is actually a comparatively good natural stone market, incidentally especially for many German suppliers – and exceptionally so for the suppliers of jura marble.