Prime Minister David Cameron and an entourage of 60 cabinet ministers, leaders of some of Britain’s largest companies and Olympic gold medalists were in India this month trying to establish a ‘special relationship’ between the two nations. The stone industry was there before them.

The economy in India is predicted to grow by 8.2% this year, having slowed to 6.8% last year. In China, the growth rate is predicted to be 9.5%. In the UK, growth rose to 1.1% in the second quarter of this year from 0.3% in the first quarter. China’s economy is already considerably larger than the UK’s and it is only a matter of time before India’s overtakes the UK’s.

These two huge Asian countries are supplying the world with goods and services in increasing quantities. And among the products they are supplying is worked stone.

Both countries have considerable resources of stone and people to extract and work it. China says its population is 1.3billion and India has 1.2billion, in each case about 20% of the World population.

Almost all the stone from Asia imported to the UK comes from India or China, and since 2007 the value of those imports has been greater than the value of stone imported from the rest of Europe, even though stone from Europe is generally more expensive than stone from the Far East – in value terms the Far East accounted for 50% of stone imports last year but in volume terms it was almost 60%. Stone bought from China, India and western Europe accounts for well over 90% of all stone imported to the UK.

But it is becoming increasingly difficult to say from which part of the world stone originates based on where it is bought. The Italians, in particular, have always sourced stone from all over the world and sold it on as worked products. Now the Chinese are also one of the world’s largest stone traders, buying block – China is Italy’s largest customer for block – and processing the stone for export to the world.

The average (sterling) price of stone from India is less than the average price of stone from China, which probably explains why more stone is imported from India, although it might also reflect the kind of stone products being imported from each country. In 2004, 31% of Indian imports were hard landscaping products, which tend to be relatively low value. As more stone has come from India, the proportion that is hard landscaping has steadily fallen until last year it was down to 16%.

Although a lot of Chinese granite seems to be used for hard landscaping, according to the figures from HM Revenue & Customs it only accounts for about 12% of Chinese stone imports to the UK and has remained within a point or two of that since 2004.

It should also be noted that the figures from HMRC show prices in unadjusted sterling values, whereas stone from China is paid for in dollars and from Europe in Euros. The falling value of the pound will have increased the sterling price of any product priced in a stronger currency, of course.

Indian stone is often priced in sterling, but Indian exporters have managed to increase prices to compensate for the fall in the value of the pound as well as selling a higher value product.

Both India and China have sources of a wide variety of stones from different parts of the countries.

India has a lot of marble. Most of what is currently used comes from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana in the north- west, and Andhra Pradesh in the east. As trade grows, other areas are also looking to exploit their resources and quarries are being developed in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and West Bengal in the north-east, Jammu & Kashmir in the north and Maharashtra in the west. The marbles are available in a wide variety of colours and figuring.

For now, Rajasthan, the largest state of India, accounts for more than 90% of India’s marble production, with reserves spread over various districts. One town, called Kishangarh, has more than 2,000 gang saws.

One of the famous marbles of Rajasthan is Indo-Italian, so called because it resembles Italian marble, but most extraction has been banned now because the sites are close to the Sariska Tiger Reserve.

Like many of the stones of the stone industry worldwide, not all the ‘marbles’ and strictly marbles. Some are onyx, while other green and yellow stones are hard but not metamorphosed limestones.

While in the UK the preference tends to be for black ‘granite’ – of which India has some fine examples – the country has an enormous variety of igneous rock and boasts more than 200 varieties commercially available.

They come primarily from the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the south and Uttar Pradesh further north, although granite is also found in Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, and Gujarat. India lays claim to being the largest exporter of granite and granite products in the world.

Some of the first of India’s stones to reach the UK were sandstones, often used as a less expensive alternative to York stone and quickly encompassed by UK quarry companies to prevent others taking their share of the hard landscaping market.

The majority of India’s sandstone comes from Rajasthan, which is also a significant producer of slate, along with some of its neighbouring states and Andhra Pradesh.

There are various deposits of limestone throughout India, used not only for building but also for the production of cement. Andhra Pradesh is the main production area. Its reserves are estimated to be more than 30million tonnes.

Extensive deposits of basalt in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Gujarat have been used as building stones for centuries and there are various other stones used as local building stones but not yet exploited for export.

In China, the three big stone areas are Fujian and Guangdong provinces in the South, and Shangdong in the North (see the map on the right).

Fujian is the largest of the stone provinces with the port of Xiamen at its heart, the equivalent of Carrara in Italy. Each year a major stone exhibition is held in Xiamen (next year’s is 6-9 March, the same dates as this year’s). More than 1,300 exhibitors are expected to fill the 100,000m² exhibition area.

Shuitou, which is near Xiamen, is home to China’s 10 largest stone companies and has become an attractive centre for other stone companies to locate to. It is also now becoming the primary centre for the production of engineered quartz, an increasing amount of which is making its way to the UK.

The second largest stone centre is Guangdong and third is Shandong. Fujian and Shandong are the largest areas for production and Guangdong is the most important centre of processing imports, most of which are of block.

These three provinces account for about 85% of Chinese stone output, says the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, but stone also comes from Sichuan, Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Guangxi, Xinjang, Anhui and a number of other smaller production areas.

According to Chinese stone companies who helped with the compilation of this report for NSS, granite is extracted from 27 areas in China, mostly in the East, Central and Southern parts of the country. The fact that it comes from so many different sources accounts for the variety available.

Marble is even more widely distributed and is extracted from 29 areas, again mostly in the East, Central and Southern parts. Sandstone comes from Sichuan province, Yunnan and Shandong. Limestone mainly from the North-East.

Slate is extracted from Jiangxi and Hebei provinces and is available in black, red, green, grey, yellow and silver crystal. Colourful slate was another of the Chinese products that came into the UK market early on and became popular as a low cost natural flooring product before travertine took over.