The online issue of Turkish Stone World magazine also mentions the slump in exports from January to June 2020
The Turkish natural stone industry must get away from the export of raw blocks, stressed Mevlüt Kaya, President of the Aegean Mineral Exporters’ Association (EMIB), in an interview with the magazine Turkish Stone World. “We need to focus on end products and design products like the Italians.” The aim, he said, was to give stone an added value.
He mentioned various initiatives of his association to achieve this goal in “3-4 years”.
However, he also noted that the country must not give up the export of rough blocks: “If we stop selling blocks, potential buyers start buying stone sfrom Iran, which are similar to ours, and we loose an export revenue of about $ 800 million. The biggest danger ahead is Iran.”
The magazine also gives the data for Turkish exports from January to June 2020: all in all, they dropped by (-)15,73%.
Sales to China were -32,43% (mainly blocks), to the US -1,09%. Growth was registered for Saudi Arabia, Israel and Germany.
(09.09.2020)
