By Shi Wei

The past near 20 years for the development of stone material industry has witnessed such stages as beginning, warming-up, and strengthening. In the early stage, stone material businesses relied on local resources and most of them were state-owned or collective-owned ones. Over the recent 10 years, the stone material industry came into being with the rapid national economic development and experienced drastic growth. All types of businesses develop flourishingly. In such places as Nan'an, Xiamen, Hui'an in Fujian province, there emerged many stone material processing and sales distributing centers in a short period relying on the convenient transportation or the local stone carving craft running in the family. In the early stage, the stone materials were mainly sold in domestic. In recent years, many businesses with strengths, foresight and markets have gone abroad to occupy the international stone material market.

The development of Chinese stone material production, consumption, import and export is attracting more and more attention from the world stone material industry. In recent years, with China attaching great importance to the resource, energy saving and environmental protection, the new policy orientation will urge the Chinese stone material industry to adjust its production structure and import and export structure. Firstly, the exploitation of domestic stone material and mine will be under stricter supervision and management. Secondly, export of products of high energy-consumption, high pollution, and resource type will be limited more strictly. Thirdly, China has reduced the import tax of marble, granite and aggregate to zero, and will increase the import of such stone material as scarce and popular marble, granite raw material and marble panel. In addition, with the increase of Chinese people's consumption level and the enhancement of the strength of stone material industry, China's stone material businesses begin marching for the international market in succession.

A batch of stone material businesses with those in Fujian and Guangdong provinces as the representatives have seized the opportunities, actively expanded the international market, and broadened the export volume and market share of products. After several year of hard work, the operation has entered the harvest period. Presently, the "going abroad" of domestic stone material businesses shows the following features:

In terms of investment, "going abroad" businesses are mostly joint ventures or sole-source investment enterprises, and their business scopes are mostly product export trade, establishment of sales outlet or processing bases. In terms of investment target, they are mainly Australia, Egypt, Spain, Tanzania, Kenya, and the United States, which are mostly stone material trade and raw material countries.

In terms of operation mode, the foreign processing trade becomes a new mode. That is to say, using the foreign resources and market, combing the comparative advantages of their technology and management, domestic stone material businesses take local raw material to conduct production and sales, which has a promising market future. Taking Nan'an as an example, the supply volume of stone material from Nan'an companies to Egypt takes up over a half of the local market share, and that to Spain takes up for around a third of that country. The mutual complementation of advantages and win-win development effect brought by international co-operation has emerged.
In terms of development trend, domestic stone material businesses will establish joint ventures with local companies, conduct in-depth and fine processing on un-processed or roughly processed products to enhance their added value and technological contents, and make them better meet the demands of local markets, which will help Chinese stone material businesses steadily expand their industry chains in the international market. To continuously make the stone material industry bigger and stronger, governments of some places actively instruct and support the strengthened international economic and technological co-operation, and provide many supportive measures for their international development, which will help those businesses further expand international market.

Fujian Xishi Group and Quanzhou Leide Stone Industry Limited are both nationally renowned stone material businesses. Not long ago, representatives from the two businesses and other local stone material businesses gathered in Fuzhou and discussed the plan of expanding American market with relevant bodies from the United States. These businesses changed their previous method of setting up companies to product, process and sell all by themselves, and began to exploit the American market with their strength as a whole. They plan to take Houston as the center and radiate towards North American market, and establish the industry brand of "North America-China Stone Material Supermarket" gradually. The reason why these companies plan to set up stone material base in the United States is that they attach importance to three favorable factors: Firstly, the consuming volume of stone material in the United States is over US$2 billion every year, and shows a trend of increase year after year; Secondly, the volume of imported stone material to the United States has exceeded US$1 billion, and increases stably at a rate of 10 percent per year, while the volume of imported stone material products to China is rather small; Thirdly, due to the increase of production cost, especially the environmental cost, the prices of stone material in the Unites States rise consequently, so the Chinese businesses can sell their products processed in China of the third country raw material at favorable prices.

The changes in domestic and overseas stone material market find many enterprises new business opportunities, and it's time for those companies with strengths and experiences to "go abroad" to expand new investment market.