Cosentino: Bestriding the globe

*  The following article is an excerpt from Design in/from Spain magazine for smartphones and tablets.

Cosentino is undoubtedly one of Spain's most respected companies, and one that flies the flag for the country around the world. It manufactures beautiful surface materials, with Silestone, Dekton and Sensa granite being its leading brands; and it has expanded from the residential worktop market into the architectural cladding sector, offering innovative materials that guarantee longevity and weather resistance.

Cosentino is a company that ploughs a lot of its profits into R&D (13 million+ euros last year) and is prepared for the long haul when developing new materials: the initial development of Dekton, for example, a compact sintered particle stone-based material, took some 22,000 man hours of research.

Cosentino's numbers are impressive: turnover last year was 730 million euros; it sells to more than 80 countries; it has 95 Cosentino Centres around the world, and five Cosentino City venues; 90 per cent of its production is for export; its head office and manufacturing complex in Almeria covers one million m2 and the daily production of Dekton stands at 1500 slabs a day.

The group, which employs more than 3,500 people worldwide, owns seven factories, six in Spain and one in Brazil. It has its own R&D company which employs 34 researchers whose backgrounds lie in chemistry, physics, and engineering. And among its many awards is the coveted National Award for Innovation from the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness.

Core materials for Cosentino products are natural quartz and stone, which are abundant in the earth's crust and found all over the world. But these materials do have to be quarried, and quarrying causes environmental degradation. So how does a company that says environmental protection is at the heart of its business reconcile with the inherent risks to the environment posed by large scale and sustained quarrying?

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