Rising prices encourage builders back to stone

摘要

Although house building seemed to come to an abrupt halt during 2008 and stone producers certainly did see sales of building stone fall sharply, for many UK stone producers the fall was not as severe as it was for the producers of other building materials, notably bricks and blocks. Certainly some builders and developers turned to concrete-based produced for some of their projects - often using natural stone at the front of a development and reconstituted stone further into it -but this was offset by an increase in the number of one-off large houses and mansions being built. The volumes of stone sold fell but much of the value was retained. There was less walling but more higher value architectural masonry. The relatively small scale of British stone production did not need too many projects of this nature to remain busy.