By Shi Wei

"Eight years ago, there were 240 stores dealing in stone materials here; nowadays, the scale of stores has developed to over 1000 in number and all stores are being let. Yet, enterprises still come to seek for renting every now and then. " Li Zhenwen, Director of the General Office, Fujian Minnan No. 1 Building Material Market Co., Ltd. told the reporter.

Minnan No. 1 Building Material Market is located at Shuitou Town, Nan'an, Quanzhou is one of the "Native Places for Stone Materials in China". The Market with an area of 600 mu and a total operation area of 200,000 square meters was originated in May 1999, and lessees consist of over 1,000 mining companies, manufacturing enterprises, trading companies, or distributors for over 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and over 20 other countries and regions including Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. Over 600 kinds of well-known, outstanding, new and special stone materials at home and abroad falling into eight series and various kinds of barren stone materials, panels, craft stone materials, stone carvings, processing machineries and processing equipments, tools and abrasives are dealt with the annual turnover amounting to over RMB2 billion yuan.

There are over 10 kinds of stone mineral resources including granite, red prumusmume stones, diabase, and Xiu Stone in the local area of Nan'an. And only the reserves of granite amount to 3 billion cubic meters. At that time, many farmers in the local area dealt with stone material processing spontaneously; but their conduct processing was with simple technologies and their products were very singular with priority given to slates and band stones while there lacked unified management in the market. Nevertheless, with a period of time spent to make preparations, Minnan No. 1 Building Material, a large market of stone materials, was set up. With efforts made in a period of eight years, the market has successfully realized a benign interaction between the market and the industry; it has become one of the main bases for the production and distribution of stone materials in China's southeast coastal areas and also the largest center of stone material processing trade, raw material distribution, and logistics and trade in China, which can process over 90 million square meters of round shaped materials, special-shape materials, thin slates, compound slates and Mosaic stone slates as well as over 30 million pieces of stone carvings each year.

How did such a place with a relatively faraway geographic location manage to grow up in a short period of a few years? There are two reasons: firstly, stone materials played a role of matchmaker and many friends were made by use of stone materials; secondly, such an achievement shall be owed to tens of thousands of people engaged in supply and marketing.

When the stone material market was just opened, the local government began to hold the annual China Nan'an Building Material Economic and Trade Fair & China (Shuitou) International Stone Expo in various forms. Enterprises took the China (Shuitou) International Stone Expo as a platform for them to exhibit stone material products, develop technical exchanges, hold specific lectures or performance of stone carving technology so as to attract clients at home and abroad to participate the exhibition and fair and thus have a further understanding of the stone material industry in Nan'an so as to get the expo combined with the fair and promote the distribution with the Expo. Obviously, China (Shuitou) International Stone Expo had driven the development of the stone material industry in Shuitou: each year, the turnover would amount to several hundred million yuan and there would be a batch of new enterprises and clients at home and abroad coming into the market after the expo and fair.

Each year, tens of thousands of people engaged in supply and marketing from Shuitou Town are busy promoting the sale of stone materials and water heating products manufacture in the local area within and without the province. The local government felt certain about the strength of those people engaged in supply and distribution, often held symposia attended by people engaged in supply and distribution who were sent out and told them that they should not only promote the sale of stone materials and other products of Shuitou but also bring back the latest information from the market to Nan'an. Therefore, a local stone material guild and a local supply and distribution guild were established. On the one hand, a resultant force can be shaped up to explore the market at home and abroad; on the other hand, both the orderly competitions between enterprises and the cooperation between people engaged in supply and distribution were thus boosted. All those measures had substantially driven the step of the local stone material industry in its upgrading. Now, Minnan No.1 Building Material Market comes out top among the 14 markets only dealing with stone materials in China; and the turnover of stone materials in the market accounts for over 50 percent of all market shares in China.

"To sell or purchase stone materials, it is necessary to go to Shuitou in China!" That is a popular jingle among clients of stone materials from abroad. Shuitou Town with a small area of 117 square kilometers is linked to the global market now. The reporter saw in the 300-mu yard of Shuitou Bonded Logistics Center that stone materials of various kinds from USA, Brazil, Turkey, etc. were piled up in the yard. Mr. Gao Wei, the man at the wheel, told us that those stone materials coming by ship arrived at the yard after entering the custom at Xiamen Port would be shipped to all over the world when having been processed in the local area. Traders could enjoy the one-stop services covering procurement, goods examination, leaving the storage, application to customs, processing and transportation.

In the past, there were relatively abundant stone materials in Nan'an; but such resources have dwindled year by year as they have been exploited during over the past several years. Since 2000, the local government and local enterprises began to turn to the international market for the procurement of raw materials and the distribution of products. They adopted such methods as holding exhibitions and fairs by themselves, participating exhibitions and fairs, sending personnel to purchase and promote the sale abroad and soon, the Shuitou Stone Material Market became very famous very soon. Now, many people from Shuitou go abroad to purchase or mine stone materials throughout a year and then they will get the stone materials obtained shipped back to Shuitou for processing. For the moment, stone materials produced there are of abundant categories, including Season Red, Star Red, Magnolia White, Night Snow, Red of Heaven Mountain, and Giallo Cecilia, etc.

In Shuitou, it can be seen that stone materials from all over the world are piled up in the goods yard and businessmen with different skin colors are negotiating with one another on business in different languages. Li Zhenwen introduced that for the moment, the number of stone material processing factories in Shuitou were increasing at a rate of eighty each year; those newly established enterprises with a high jumping-off point had better equipments, more product patterns and numerous talents; those orders placed during the annual China (Shuitou) International Stone Expo were sufficient for them to complete in a period of time longer than a year. The reporter saw in local talent-hunting websites that some of local enterprises made it clear in their recruitment conditions that applicants should be provided with the capability and experiences in the development of overseas market while those people who have expertise in both stone materials and international trade become favorite talents.