September 11, 2006 | Recommend this Article »

Creating an stone district in China

A new challenge for the italian techno-stone sector

Assomarmomacchine, the Italian association of makers and users of machinery and equipment for processing natural stone, and its own training branch, ISIM (the International Marble Institute) met in Rome in July to check on the status of the feasibility study being done to ascertain the conditions and possibilities of creating an industrial district in China devoted to Italian stone companies, a project recently approved and co-financed by the International Commerce Ministry and Assomarmomacchine itself.

Plans for setting up a business and production district in China for Italian techno-stone companies are moving along. In fact, during their recent meeting Flavio Marabelli, Assomarmomacchine president, and Paolo Marone, ISIM general director, mainly discussed modus operandi to follow for the project’s feasibility study.

The choice of location fell to the industrial and extractive district of Xiamen/Shui-Tou, an especially important stone area in the Fujian Province in which is processed and through which transits about 70% of China’s stone exports – an ideal place for headquartering business and production that could be a winner for a future Italian stone district, too.

The feasibility study, titled “Sino-Petropolis”, is part of a wider framework of internationalizing, industrially developing and promoting abroad the small to medium-sized Italian companies that are makers and users of machinery and equipment for processing natural stone. The project, in fact, is intended to help these companies get a foothold on the decisive Asian market while at the same time defending the output of an important sector in the Italian economy, which, especially in the past few years, has found itself contending with fiercer, better organized and more competitive rivals, the Chinese first and foremost.

Assomarmomacchine, Italian stone-sector reference, is promoting this ambitious project, defining its content and aims and firmly intent on going beyond traditional promotion work – be it ever so valid and up-to-date – such as fairs, seminars, operator missions and workshop schools, this time proceeding towards structurally and permanently rooting Italian companies in one of the markets potentially of greatest importance for the stone sector worldwide.