A to Z of natural stone industry in 2020

Then I arrived at the second stop. Muscat Airport in Oman. It was a new area after the 2018 renovation made at the Muscat International Airport constructed in 1973. What caught my eye in the area was how much the natural stone was applied. To be more precise, Oman Beige. As soon as you step into the place from the international flight gate you see this stone applied on the ground and the columns. The “domestic and national” approach that I am talking about was quite present in sometimes CNC decorations and through Oman Beige adorned and colored with different onyx applications in the international transfer area. The people of Oman proudly promote and exhibit their national stone where they’re most integrated with the world, at the airport.

As a Turk active in the natural stone sector, this view hurt my heart. On one side Oman valuing its national stone, and on the other, Turkey applying imported stones in its own area. The thing is, it’s not this approach of Oman that we should underline here. Some of you might not know that for the fourth terminal of Madrid Barajas Airport a tender was made and the unchangeable condition set by the Spanish National Airports Authority (AENA) for the project was the appliance of the beige stones extracted in the Barajas region of Spain. More than one million square meters of Spanish stones were applied at the largest airport in Spain. The shames brought on the Turkish natural stone sector are beyond count. You’ll remember. We imported Chinese granites for the construction of Istanbul Atatürk Airport. For the renovation of Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport, we imported granite from China! We excluded the Burdur Beige from the project of Sabiha Gökçen Airport and imported granite from India. Again, we imported granite from Brazil as we were building the third airport in Istanbul. I do wonder when this habit of backstabbing our national natural stone sector will end.