Is economic climate change going to lead to the mass extinction of lumbering giants that cannot compete with nimbler, more adaptable entrepreneurs? Or will the giants take all that is going without leaving any crumbs for the weak? For now, companies that don’t need too much to survive seem to be faring best.

DeLank granite kerbs from Cornwall have been laid in the City of London again. Granite from the Cornish quarry used to be the material preferred by the City, but a decade ago the City authorities changed to using Chinese granite. They might have carried on using it, but what had been ordered for a project in Crutched Friars failed to arrive.

The logistics of diverting traffic for road works in London are significant, so when a project is planned it tends to go ahead. There was not time to re-order the kerbs from China, so they turned to DeLank to save the day by providing the 80 linear metres of radiused kerbing and 20m of straight kerbs required.

It was not that difficult a decision for them to make, says Adrian Phillips, who owns DeLank quarry, because the City has discovered when it has carried out roadworks that DeLank granite that has been in service for 30 or 40 years is in better condition than Chinese granite laid only five or six years ago that is already coming to the end of its useful life. “The quality and strength of DeLank pays dividends,” says Adrian.

As an indication of the difference in quality, Adrian says when he is sawing Chinese granite he can set his saws as if they were processing sandstone with a 50mm drop on each pass, whereas that has to be reduced to 6mm to cut through the DeLank granite. “The only thing that makes my job easier is that we actually do offer the best granite,” says Adrian.

You will be able to see DeLank granite on Adrian’s stand at the Natural Stone Show (ExCeL London 30 April-2 May) alongside the stone from another side of Adrian’s business, Black Mountain Quarries on the English/Welsh border in Herefordshire. The stone on show will include a Yorkstone. “We have found a nice source of it that’s doing very well,” says Adrian.

Cornish granite is certainly not the only stone from the British Isles that is used by hard landscapers. In fact, many of the suppliers of indigenous stones used for hard landscaping report that demand has held up reasonably well even as sales of increasingly expensive imports have continued to fall, according to figures from HM Revenue & Customs.

There are no reliable figures available of British dimensional stone production, but anecdotal evidence from the suppliers suggests demand for their hard landscaping has held up better than it has for imports.

According to the HMRC figures, which only go to October and will be revised at least to some extent in the coming months, the second dip of the double dip recession in imported hard landscaping products that started in 2011 worsened in 2012. There had been some recovery in 2010 after imports had more than halved between 2007 and 2009.

If clients and designers are looking more to indigenous stone for their projects their decisions have, no doubt, been influenced by a 50% increase in the average price of imports between 2005 and 2011.

At the same time there have been some bargains to be had from British stone producers – although perhaps not as many as there might have been. Most British dimensional stone quarry companies are relatively small operations that would not be able to meet the demand if suddenly all imports stopped and transferred to indigenous products.

One of the producers told NSS that it had significantly cut its prices at the start of the economic crash but had not increased sales and has subsequently put them up again without any noticeable drop in sales.

It would seem price is not always the driving factor in decisions about stone. Planning authorities still play an important role in determining the materials used in private projects and elected councillors no doubt find it relatively easy to spend ratepayers’ money on local products rather than imports for public sector projects (see the report on the next page about the use of Welsh slate in Bangor, north Wales).

The popularity of indigenous stones was also clearly evident at the Natural Stone Awards, presented at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London at the end of November. Three of the four projects honoured, including the Award winner itself, used stone from the British Isles. The Award went to The Queen’s Walk, part of the acres of Irish Blue limestone hard landscaping around the Mayor’s office in London. Tudor Square in Sheffield with its Crosland Hill Yorkstone paving and planters produced by Johnsons Wellfield Quarries on its robot workcentres (see picture on page 26) was Highly Commended. And Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, London, where Scoutmoor York stone from Marshalls was used alongside various Chinese granites and Alta quartzite from Norway, was Commended.

There was one other project that was Commended: Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It is a thoughtfully designed project skillfully executed by GU Contracts working for Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering. It makes a huge contribution to the area that encompasses the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was one of the projects in Mayor Boris Johnson’s Making Space for Londoners project. And it is all in Chinese Granite supplied by Marshalls, a market leader in hard landscaping products of all kinds, including indigenous and imported stone and concrete.

Exhibition Road and acres of paving supplied for the Olympics, including 14,000m2 of Yorkstone, boosted sales for Marshalls in 2011 and into 2012. But the economic downturn has not been an easy time for the PLC that has sales above £300million a year and its difficulties demonstrate just how hard a time the landscaping market is having overall.

Smaller operations do not need many projects to keep them busy. Marshalls needs a lot to feed it and spent more time getting even slimmer last year so it does not need quite as much.

It has started 2013 with a trading update issued on 4 January explaining that sales in the year to December 2012 had fallen by £25million (over 7%) compared with 2011, taking it back to the level of turnover it saw in 2010.

In its statement it blames prolonged periods of heavy rainfall during the normally busy summer months for at least part of its difficulties.

It says sales to the public sector and commercial market, which represent 63% of its turnover, were down 6% while the domestic market, accounting for 32% of its sales, was down 12%.

It explains that a reorganisation involving closures and mothballing announced in July last year had been completed ahead of schedule and the cost reduction benefits are now being delivered as expected and both fixed costs and net debt have been reduced.

Property sales, accelerated inventory reduction and reduced capital expenditure is ahead of plan, cutting year end net debt to £64million (it was £77million at the end of 2011).

Despite the challenging economic background, Marshalls tells shareholders it continues to seek growth markets in the public sector and commercial end market, identifying growth areas particularly as street furniture, water management and internal natural stone flooring.

The consumer market remains reasonably stable, albeit at a low level, and Marshalls is committed to continuing to develop the Register of its approved installers that it started in 2010 as a way of trying to create a bond with trade customers.

At the end of October, Marshalls surveyed its installers and was encouraged to discover that order books had stretched out to 8.7 weeks from 7.8 weeks a year earlier.

Its installers are given the opportunity to include photos and information about themselves and their work on PDF forms that consumers can download from the Marshalls website in order to find tradespeople in their localities – their localities being identified by the consumer entering a post code.

Inevitably, some of the forms have a lot of blank spaces where there should be photographs and marketing messages.

Overall, Marshalls says it is well placed to take advantage of any improvement in market conditions.

Exhibitions 2013

There is one less landscaping exhibition this year as the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI), the trade association whose show was resurrected at Stoneleigh Park in 2011, has cancelled its event in June.

BALI Chairman Chris Carr suggests business-to-business shows are suffering from the effects of the internet but he says the trade is missing out as a result. “What [the internet] can’t do is show you the dream and, in that respect, there is no substitute for seeing, feeling and experiencing a product and discussing the options with someone in the know,” he says.

BALI will, however, be exhibiting at Landscape, the exhibition started in 2011 and taking place this year in Battersea Park, London, on 24 & 25 September.

It is in direct competition with the long-established GLEE exhibition at the NEC Birmingham 15-17 September, which has decided to return to a Sunday opening because it says it is what visitors want.

There is always some stone to be seen at these shows and also usually some concrete flagged up as stone.