Overview
STONETECH 2008 SHANGHAI was held successfully from April 8th to 11th as scheduled. The show attained a higher excellence again in scale and in amount of participants. It covered 75,000 square meters with 5 halls. 898 exhibitors from all over the world gathered at Shanghai New International Expo Center.

Exhibitors
This year some new exhibitors joined STONETECH and they said they would like to attend the show next year because at the fair the exhibitors and visitors could communicate face to face with stone samples and machinery models' physical presence.
Still the Chinese companies were enthusiastic on displaying their top-selling products, new machines and new stone colors. Many booths were filled up by the visitors. The staffs were so busy at receiving the guests that they even did not have time for a swallow of water.
In the past 15 years, more and more members of stone industry have regarded STONETECH as one of the most important exhibitions of its kind in the world. Many international companies have made their reservation as soon as the previous one ended and they kept on showing themselves every year in the fair.

National Pavilions
At STONETECH 2008, visitors could find pavilions from Italy, Iran, Brazil, Greece, Turkey Egypt, Spain and etc. as usual under the identical decoration of each country.
Italy brought the big pavilion to the show again. STONETECH has for the first time had the official support of Confindustria Marmo of Italy, and ACIMM. They've succeeded in bringing a number of Italian companies to STONETECH. Meanwhile, AIMM has not stopped the efforts on serving their member companies by bringing them to STONETECH though they simultaneously support the counterpart of STONETECH down to the south of China.
The Egyptian companies made their presence in STONETECH 2008 again with 11 companies. Iran Pavilion also appeared in the show with their beautiful and unique marble and granite stone. As a rising market of stone industry, Iran Pavilion covered more than 1,000 square meters in the show.

Trade Visitors
The two alternative cities, i.e. Beijing and Shanghai are the top ones which develop most rapidly in China. They hold a lot of experienced realtors, builders and designers. Besides, the transport services of Beijing and Shanghai are convenient and speedy. No wonder that exhibiting in these two cities can get good results because the serious buyers have good access to communicating with the stone sellers directly.
STONETECH kept good relation with officials from government, embassy and local consulates. The organizers invited them to attend the opening ceremony on the first day of the fair as usual. The visits of the President of Qatar and the Prime Minister of Turkey put more importance on STONETECH's internationalization and its being high class.
The organizers have never stopped the efforts of bringing trade visitors for the exhibitors. Since the early preparation, the advertisements and the fair information were released on both magazines and the internet to the traditional industrial nations and the emerging stone-consuming areas as well. The result was very positive. A lot of international companies and individuals left messages online or sent emails with the same intention to attend the show. The figures were most convincing to this fact. In STONETECH 2008, 57.63% visitors planed to collect market information and 45.76% paid their first attention to slabs. Among the visitors 36.65% were from stone processing companies and 18.09% were from IMP &EXP companies. As for the main function, 48.31% visitors were CEOs, general mangers or vice general managers. Trade or purchase managers occupied 17.80%.
Meanwhile, the organizers offered their best service to the visitors on hotel reservation, visa application, information enquiry and so on, as the organizers were well aware of the importance of the professional visitors.

Featured Events
During STONETECH 2008 SHANGHAI, a series of seminars, conferences and forums were held to enrich the exhibition and provide more information to the audience.
The organizers have invited the managing director of the Construction Department of World Expo 2010 for a launch of World Expo project and other projects in Shanghai. Companies from China and Portugal gave excellent speeches for introducing their new products. In a word, all the activities attracted a large audience. After the meetings the participants said the information were practical and they were willing to attend such meetings again.

Export Tax Drawback
From Sep 15, 2006, the Chinese government has cut the export drawback to 0 regarding Stone raw materials, coal and natural gas. With such an adjustment, the Chinese government intends to decrease the export of raw materials like stone blocks to the outside world so as to better reserve the natural stone resources of the country. What does it mean by the decrease to STONETECH?
On one hand, some companies decided to change their way of running business from the original exploitation of the raw blocks to the development of stone processing trade. People can feel the increase of the exhibits of the artificial stones and stone end products in STONETECH.
On the other hand, stone producers in south China especially are turning their look back to the domestic market of China instead of the overseas market. Moreover, the world is turning their look at China again as a main stone importing country and end products consumer. Stone end products (tiles, slabs etc.) from overseas will be more desired by the Chinese importers comparing with blocks.