Europe\'s two biggest spring stone exhibitions - in Carrara, Italy, and Nuremberg, Germany - are preparing once again to compete for visitors from around the world. In America, the stone element of Coverings is once again a more significant part of the exhibition.

Marmotec in Carrara is held every year and every other year faces the continually growing competition of Stone+tec in Germany, now the bigger of the two events.

The port of Carrara, nestling beneath the Apuan Alps from which more than 40 types of marble are extracted (Statuary, Bardiglio, Cipollino, etc) can, with more than 1,000 companies engaged in the sector, still claim to be the world\'s largest stone centre, both in terms of processing and international trading.

Nevertheless, the mighty Deutschmark has a loud voice. Most of the world (even a few from the UK) wants to sell to Germany and the past two events in Nuremberg have been bigger than the Italian show.

This time Stone+tec will have about 1,200 exhibitors compared with Marmotec\'s 800 or so. The Nuremberg show occupies about 90,000m[2], Carrara about 30,000m[2],. Both shows say they are anticipating about 50,000 visitors, which includes consumers because the exhibitions are open to the public.

In 1997 and 1999 Carrara suffered badly at the hands of Nuremberg in terms of visitors. Since then they have carried out improvements to their showground and put more of it under cover. They have also arranged their exhibition to run from 31 May to 3 June this time, just after Germany\'s (24-27 May) rather than just before it as in the past.

The Germans, like all other stone exhibition organisers, want to attract specifiers and have designated the second day of their four-day event as Architecture Day, during which they will present the 10th German Natural Stone Awards.

The first prize of DM30,000 (£10,000) will be awarded to Berlin architect Volker Staab for the State Museum for Art & Design in Nuremberg, a contemporary pinkish sandstone building in a historic setting.

On the other side of Atlantic, meanwhile, Coverings continues to grow. Its 1,100 exhibitors include 120 new names, an ever increasing proportion of them dealing in stone (although still the minority).

There will be some Irish stone exhibited in the 80,000m[2] show, although there does not appear to be evidence of English stone. UK stone companies that have visited Coverings in previous years have reported that they found the trip worthwhile.

All the shows have their own websites - see below.