With sales going back up last year to nearly £7million and pre-tax profit improving by almost 40%, Levantina UK has brought some of the Spanish parent’s sunshine into the market. And with more new products and salespeople, it is a trend the company aims to continue.

The UK subsidiary of Spanish stone giants Levantina has enjoyed the sort of success that most companies have only dreamt about since the start of the recession. Sales were up 22% last year and pre-tax profits improved by 39%.

Shaun Hopkinson, who heads the UK sales operation, attributes the success to the range and quality of the products and services of the company and getting those products and services out in front of customers.

Timing is everything, of course – being there when customers are ready to buy. Doing that requires people and, bucking the general trend, Levantina UK has increased its workforce, recruiting Mark Payne and Paul Danby, previously with Pisani, to the Northern depot in Rotherham (which now also delivers into Scotland) and Lee Shephard, who was with Cosentino, to the Southern depot in Basingstoke.

They bring the number of employees at Levantina UK up to 14. Shaun says: “It’s very much a team effort. It’s not one individual that makes us successful, it is all of us working together – and that goes for the whole group.”

Having that huge Levantina parent behind it is a significant factor in the UK company’s position. Levantina, founded in 1959, owns the world’s largest deposit of Crema Marfil, located in the Alicante Province of Spain, as well as other quarries. It buys stone from around 200 other producers worldwide and has eight factories to process it all ready for distribution through its 35 warehouses.

That combines to give Levantina impressive buying power, as well as control over its own production. Both are used to good effect to maintain not just prices but also the quality of the stones it sells. It is with some pride that Shaun says the two UK depots combined had only 30 slabs returned last year.

That attention to quality control – assured by having people on the ground in the producer markets checking every block before it is shipped – and a range that includes exclusive Spanish marbles and Brazilian and Indian granites bought directly from source has all helped maintain margins.

Having people around the world also helps identify new materials. Because it is all very well having salespeople in front of customers in Britain, but it helps to keep them interested if there is something new to offer them.

Among the latest launches from Levantina is the stunning natural Titanium Blue granite pictured on the left. There is also White Spring from Brazil and Panther Black from India (available with a ‘leather’ finish as well as polished).

Another popular product is Techlam, the latest in porcelain technology. It is just 3mm thick and weighs only 7kg per square metre. It is packaged up in boxes of 3m2 each.

Techlam is part of a major push in tiles that Levantina UK hopes this year will give it a repeat of last year’s performance. There are 14 new natural stone tiles on offer at sizes from 305 x 305mm up to 600 x 600mm. And there is a new range of 1metre square stones, with their own point-of-sale display stands, that bridge a gap between tiles and slabs.

An increasingly relevant aspect of any successful business is logistics – getting raw materials to the factory and finished product out into the market as efficiently as possible. It is especially relevant when you buy from all the major markets across the world and export to more than 110 countries, as Levantina does.

It has now, as the result of significant and expensive effort verified by external auditing, improved its logistics still further by gaining an Authorized Economic Operator certificate.

This is awarded by customs authorities and was issued to Levantina by AEAT, the Spanish Tax Authority. It means that, since January, Levantina has been able to simplify its customs procedures, both for import and export. This speeds up the transit of goods and increases the reliability of the supply chain.

Only 344 of Spain’s largest companies have this accreditation and Levantina is the first in the natural stone sector.

It adds a further comfort factor when Levantina is supplying major projects, as it often does, to know that no matter how much stone is required, the quantities specified will arrive to schedule to accommodate modern, fast-track construction.