Our story
Ethically Sourced Natural Stone Paving and Tiles
Perfectly formed over
Millions of years
There are many types of natural stone tiles sold in the UK for use in the home or as paving, but the most popular are sandstones and limestones extracted in India. Like all sandstones, the Indian materials are sedimentary rocks comprising mostly of minerals formed from sand.
The stone gains its formation through centuries of deposits forming in lakes, rivers, or on the ocean floor which group together with quartz or calcite minerals and compress over time. Limestone is defined as being primarily composed of calcium carbonate, which often comes from plant and animal material such as the shells of molluscs, but does not typically have the stratification pattern and markings often found with many sandstones.
Extraction
Most of the sandstone supplied into the UK are from the regions of Kota and Bundi in Rajasthan, whilst alternatively, many of the limestone materials emanate from Andhra Pradesh in the South of India.
The rock layers of sandstone and limestone typically form in horizontal plateaus within 50 metres of the ground's surface, which enables large blocks of sandstone to be cut from the seam before sawing or splitting into more manageable sized slabs for processing. The limestone by nature is normally cut into slabs directly from the seam.
Processing
The natural stone slabs are first checked for quality and compliance with the expected range of colour and markings, before being split mechanically or by hand into large slabs. When in manageable sizes, they are split into tiles by using hammer and chisel hand tools, and the tile edges dressed/cut with a mason’s axe to the stock sizes of the material required.
The tiles will have variable thicknesses, so are normally processed through a calibration machine, which has a series of closely- spaced saw blades that cut grooves into the underside of the tile. This will ensure a consistent pre-selected thickness is achieved, before being packed or applying a secondary finishing process such as tumbling to be carried out to the tiles surface.
Delivery
The product will be crated into a project or single-sized pack and then loaded into a container for onward transportation to a UK port. This is unloaded from the ship and all the product removed allowing it to be checked and logged before onward dispatch via the pallet network to our customer.
This process means the product minimises transportation to other distributors before arriving at your home and significantly reduces C02 emissions and vehicle movements on the UK road network.
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