Press Release – Day 4
Jaipur, 5 February: The Stone Mart is growing from strength to strength and it is fast becoming an international hub with buyers and sellers coming from various parts of the world-from Algiers to Brazil, China, Taiwan Greece, Poland, Tunisia, Myanmar, South Africa, Turkey, Iran and UAE.
“In fact the number of foreign participants as exhibitors has increased many folds and in the Stone Mart 2017 the foreign exhibitors are almost one fourth of the total exhibitors. The people from stone industry around the globe are recognising the Stone Mart now. Thus India is not only becoming a destination for buying and selling dimensional stones like marble, granite, sandstones, slates, but is also a destination for selling technology. The Chinese as well as the Turkish and Italian machine and tool manufacturers eye India as a big market for their products. What is amazing is architects and builders who are going for mega building projects came to Stone Mart to see the options available for them in dimensional stones. This mart gave them an opportunity to see not only Indian stones but also stones from various other countries. Apart from that the Stone Mart is also emerging as a good exhibition centre for stone artifacts. We are now planning to take the foreign and domestic buyers to visit Rajasthan’s stone clusters and also the architects. The architects have started understanding the importance of the Stone Mart and they are coming with builders and clients to show them the options available at Jaipur.” said Ashok Kumar Dhoot, Vice Chairman of C DOS.
Once again a large number of participants and exhibitors have come from Turkey which has a rich deposit of marble and the country has improved its exports through better application of technology.
The exhibition centre of the foreign stalls is using state-of-the art display system to showcase their products. They are displayed in large sizes placed in a wall where it is easy to understand about the quality of the stone and its properties.
The Greece pavilion of the FHI Kiriakidis Group is participating for the first time and their stall has attracted a large number of footfalls because of the white marble.
“The white marble from Greece is becoming a craze all over the world and in UAE we sold one lakh tones of our white marble that was used for building a huge mosque. It is like another Taj Mahal. We have done good business through we came for the first time to Jaipur and we will come again” said Madia Angelakaki of Kiriakidis Group.
Iran which is also a big producer of marble has participated for the second time through a stall Iran Stone Company. But You Stone, a company that provides consultancy on stone sector in Iran is here to give an insight of the Iran stone industry and the various solutions. This stall is frequented by the Indian as well as foreign buyers.
In fact what is interesting to note was the new born craze for the green and brown Indian marbles. People are looking for green and brown both in marble and in granite as dimensional stones. The colours are replacing the white stone very fast which is a good sign for Indian stone industry.
Buyers from Brazil, Tunisia, South Africa, UAE are looking for variety of colour options available in Stone Mart.
A four-member delegation from Myanmar led by Hla Moe Zaw of the Myanmar commerce ministry is here to understand the stone industry which the Myanmar want to develop as it has huge deposits of stones and they want to collaborate with the Indian partners.