(March 2008) Thin cuts out of cobblestones produces the Belgian company VASP. By a diamant-saw, the stones are sliced into thin plates of two cm thickness, which can be glued on to a flooring like tiles. The tecnique of production was developed by the company-founder Filipe van Aelst, who is a specialist for such sawing-tecniques. As he says, the idea came out of innovative recycling, when in roadworks lots of asphalted cobblestones where accumulated. Due to the tar on them, they couldn’t be recycled, which meant that they would end up in the crusher.
Since one year and half the company distributes the new product and, as van Aelst says, „there is a great demand“. This is „because Belgians like cobblestone“, and with the new product they can take it into their homes oder inside of their shopping centers, e.g. This although the slices are not cheap – their price lies in the range of massive-cobblestones produced in Europe.
At the moment, the company with four employees in Malle near Antwerpen slices Belgian porphyry and Swedish granite with a diamond-saw which is the firm’s own developement. For the future, they plan to try themselves on other stones and also on bigger pebbles. „Pebbles give roundish slices“, van Aelst says.
