Background

People have been mixing rocks with bonding agents for a long time. One hundred years ago, Terrazzo pavers were mixing marble or granite pieces with concrete to create an "engineered" stone floor.

In the 1960's companies began experimenting with producing slabs from crushed quartz or marble chips, and bonding it with various resins. Today, machines are capable of vibrating and vacuum pressurizing slabs into a consistent and hard-wearing material, we call Engineered Stone or Reconstituted (Recon) Stone.

Basically, the process is, quartz chips, colouring, and bonding agents are mixed into the machine, the machine vibrates and vacuum compacts the material into a sheet, the sheet is fed out of the machine and cut into slabs.

Why?

The resulting material has several advantages for the commercial production of slabs. Whereby natural stone production must take what nature has provided, ie colours, faults, hardness, porosity etc, Engineered stone can be produced, exactly the same, and to specification, slab after slab after slab.

Designers and customers can choose an Engineered stone sample, and be assured that the resulting production will be almost exactly the same as the given sample. For large commercial projects, where the output must be identical, this is a definite advantage.

Is it Better?

Many Engineered stones are less porous than marble. But, some Engineered stones are produced with other effects in mind, and may actually be just as porous as marble.

Engineered stone produced for the commercial market is designed to be hard-wearing and consistent in colour. The other benefit is that it is strong, which is of benefit for the manufacturers because less wastage occurs due to breakage during transport, manufacture and installation.

Is it Cheaper?

All Engineered stone is imported, and depending on the place of manufacture, the exchange rate, and the marketing arrangements of the companies involved, it may be the same price, cheaper, or more expensive than natural stone.

Where does it comes from?

Currently, there are Engineered stone machines operating in Israel, Spain, France, Italy, USA, Vietnam and China.

These machines may make slabs for just one Engineered stone brand, or may make slabs for several brands that can be then marketed under different brand-names.

Engineered Stone brands available from Marble Art are:

• Caesarstone
• Smartstone
• Essastone
• Silestone
• Stoneitaliano
• QuantumQuartz