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THE 100TH ISSUE… AND EXPECT MORE!

You are right now reading the 100th issue of Świat Kamienia. Life expectancy studies show that every third person who is born today will live up to 100 years old. Therefore, it is highly possible that as soon as our future readers (who are born now) are 100 years old, they will get the 700th issue of our bimonthly then!  

We seem to be in a good shape. The condition of our magazine allows us to hope that one hundred issues is just a warm-up. We are trying to be as precise as stone industry professionals. We reach our subscribers every second month. We are still working with authors who remember humble beginnings of the first stone branch magazine in Poland.

– Świat Kamienia initiated stone advertising in Poland and abroad – our long-time article author Józef Maślaniec recalls. – The magazine was the first authentic source of information about stone industry and technology in the history of journalism (not mentioning a short series of post-war periodicals). Until that moment our branch had been commonly associated only with crushing stone for the purposes of paving streets. Before the war there was no stone industry and this craft was associated with elite art.

100 wydanieBefore Świat Kamienia appeared on the market it had been commonly said that building stone tradition had originated from sacral buildings. After the period of political transformation, the competition for national deposits was justified because our deposits were quite poor from the geological point of view and extraction costs were disproportionately high compared to profits, which found its reflection in lower stone extraction and production volumes from domestic rock raw materials. Privatization of mines of rock raw materials took place in the second half of 1990s. At that time the natural stone consumption in the European Union countries started growing and natural material was experiencing a renaissance. Making stone import more common in a new Polish economic reality led to the moment that the unprecedented activity of entrepreneurs had to be complemented by just one thing – by giving any branch representation and coordination framework in terms of communication.  

Świat Kamienia was created, among others, on the initiative of Tomasz Czekaj. A young businessman who started his serious trade business in mid 1990s (and shortly after in the field of sandblasting machines) had no doubts.  

– The branch had to have its magazine. The hunger for information and the entrepreneurs' need to communicate (since not everybody could afford to go abroad and take part in fairs) left no doubt – Tomasz Czekaj recalls the decision taken to the delight of ABRA employees in the hotel room during ... advertising fair in Poznań.

Another justification for the debut of our bimonthly was that at that time the structures of the branch representation started to crystallise. The Association of Stone Industry Employers had its media patron from the start and our magazine got high quality stone-related texts.

PRESS TITLE

From the very first issue our magazine was full of reports from international fairs – Nuremberg Fair was the priority then, Verona was trying to be more and more significant (our younger readers may not be familiar with this). With every new issue there were more and more advertisements and sponsored texts, so, consequently, the size of our magazine was increasing.

100 wydanie 2– Everything that is new is interesting, so everybody reacted in a similar way. Advertisements of stone blocks from Finland were quickly followed by advertisements from other companies – Dominik Lis, one of our first advertisers, recalls the beginnings of his cooperation with Świat Kamienia. - I remember the emotions we felt while waiting for the first supply of stone. Those sleepless nights during which my wife and I were writing 1,200 letters with notifications to our clients. And today? I can make a notification within 5 minutes and send it by email to all our clients.  

Later, Athena company started advertising in Świat Kamienia. The company is famous for importing materials from Greece. There were more and more companies which dealt with importing stone material. It was caused by opening up of borders and lifting of tariff barriers – the import finally got the green light.  

The variety of raw materials became attractive for architecture. The branch experienced a great development. It was much bigger than in other countries. One of the first tycoons in trading block stone and slabs was Brachot-Hermant, an indisputable leader on the market of natural stone in Belgium. This company opened its first foreign branch in Poland in 1993. Other companies followed. One of them was M+Q – a key supplier of natural stone on the Polish market since 2004. The infrastructure, however, was poor. Those who had a telephone and a fax were a step ahead of their competitors.    

– In early 1990s I had a phone in my car, so I was on the top – laughs Tadeusz Modliński, the owner of Kamieniarz company, which had its debut at Nuremberg fair in 1993. - During the fair in Wałbrzych we were partying even more, because I decided to celebrate my birthday then.  

Free market whetted appetites of entrepreneurial Poles. Those who were consistent in what they were doing might have afforded a luxury car in a month. There were many anecdotes about “golden kings” (Adam Bukacki, the owner of Chem-Stone company was one of those who had that nickname – editorial note) because the margin for more lavish tombstones was many times higher than the cost of its production! Machines were being sold very well because the need to modernise both mines and processing plants was enormous. The first wave of modernising machinery parks was possible thanks to trade routes via Germany and Italy. Among used equipment there were more expensive and advanced tools (for example Diakers saws and bridge saws). A long time before Italian technology became popular in Poland, Polish stonemasons had been using reliable German machines (Fickert + Winterling, for example). Another interesting alternative, from economical point of view, were machines that were based on Polish technology (we should mention the late Jan Wątroba here, one of the first constructors of “made in Poland” machines in capitalist Poland and the founder of Promech company), but we should not forget about important role of small, usually anonymous, craftsmen. Saws or technologically uncomplicated crushers and, most of all, cranes and handling equipment were “assembled” on one's own, often in poor conditions. Therefore, locksmiths' role was incredibly significant here.

BRANCH

As soon as modernisation processes had started, the demand on staff became incredibly high. Graduates from AGH University of Science and Technology or Wrocław University of Technology are still the core in open-cast mining, but the reality looks different if it comes to stone industry. Few attempts to revive vocational education took place in 1960s. In the new capitalist system only few specialists cared about this issue. What is the effect?  

100 wydanie 3– There were no qualified workers in our branch in all those years and there are none of them today either! - says Krzysztof Skolak, a long-time teacher at the only Polish school with stone courses and a president of ZPBK since its 19th General Meeting. Qualified workers used to come to stone branch (and are coming now) in a very limited number thanks to multi-professional classes which gather young people who want to find niche or disappearing professions.

It is true that in the Technical and General High School Complex in Sandomierz there is (the only in Poland) Technical School of Stucco Work and Artistic Stone Craft, but we need to add that there are only a few students there. We cannot forget that some employers have special merits here. Their initiatives in the field of specialised education are very important for the future of our industry. One of those companies is Przedsiębiorstwo Kamieniarskie “Wolski”, which has trained hundreds of young people since 1985. This company often collaborates with chambers of crafts or “Bazalt” foundation from Strzegom in organising special events for students of architecture or with stone branch schools from Germany or the Czech Republic under the EU-sponsored project.

The accession to the European Union meant for stone industry another chance to modernise machinery park – this time with an enormous financial support from the funds from Regional Operational Programmes. Stone companies used funds mainly to buy new machines: water jets, polishing lines, CNC machines. In 2007 there were as many as 92 projects worth 70 million zlotys with the financial EU support of 30-50 percent of the investment value.   

Let us also mention the potential of our branch in numbers. In 1995 the catalogue entitled “Kamieniarz Polski” (Polish stonemason) made by h.g. BRAUNE company included less than 500 companies. Whereas according to the Świat Kamienia reports on the condition of stone industry in Poland,  the number of businesses in which the prevailing activity is “cutting, processing and finishing stone” (you can find it under the symbol PKD 23.70.Z) is 6879.

100 wydanie 4One thing is certain: in the last years we have experienced quantitative, technological and qualitative development of stone industry in Poland. Recently tombstone industry has become less significant compared to the so-called “construction” stone industry. The proportions changed and today at least 60% of supply is the so-called “thin slab”. The demand on tombstones? It is strongly correlated with the number of deaths and inversely proportional to the popularity of cremation. It is estimated that annual average demand on tombstones is now about 2 million sq metres and is going down. What is more, in the time of huge competition of cheap goods from the countries with high competitiveness growth such as Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC), more and more companies are reducing their production capacities. Signing an agreement between the European Union and China on the access to the market was an important event. It was in May 2000 and paved the way for China to become a WTO member. Sawing of blocks seems to be an unprofitable activity because of the policy of the EU which has been the main trade partner of South Africa for many years. The cooperation is regulated by the Trade Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) from 1999. Raw minerals (including gold and diamonds, but also stone) constitute as many as 60% of goods exported from the RSA to the EU.

– We have applied the EU standards as soon as we joined the EU. What did it change? Previous standards specified requirements that every stone used to make a given product must meet. The EU standards specify only types of studies, but specifying parameters is up to the designer. It is not good because we know that architects do not always know a lot about stones – complains Stanisław Sitarz, a long-time member of Stone Industry Employers Association (ZPBK).

Why are architects afraid of stone? This question was raised during the heated debate organised by Świat Kamienia at Kamień-Stone 2013 fair in Poznań.

CHALLENGES

Does high demand on natural raw material (stone) mean that the society is getting richer? It is not so obvious. Poland is currently the third largest producer of ceramics, glass and concrete goods in Europe and the largest manufacturer of concrete cube in Europe!

We got used to the situation that a typical stonemason is busy with things related to running a company. Hire a manager! - our long-time author encouraged stonemasons in one of ŚK issues. Rafał Zahorski's suggestions did not remain unanswered. Translating values of natural rock material into the success on the market depends more and more on communicating our competences.

– We, apart from publishing ads in branch magazines, also made our debut in LOT airline in-flight magazine “Kaleidoscope” - admits Paweł Młynarski from I-Mar company, which was established in 1989 and is now specialising in stone construction works.

Natural stone is not only popular as a building material used on facades or as an interior finishing element. Its role is growing in the places where it is treated as a material that shapes our daily landscape. In Świat Kamienia we were writing about many initiatives that make small architecture forms popular – to mention only gabions! Stone craft supports exposing natural and cultural values which guarantees development of tourism (didactic paths). We are going to write more about this in the coming issues of Świat Kamienia.

Rafał Dobrowolski

 

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     Wszystkie prawa zastrzeżone - Świat-Kamienia 1999-2012
     Projekt i wykonanie: Wilinet