Established in 1989, Kangli Stone Group has grown to become a strong entity in the global stone industry. The company, which specializes in the production of natural stone and quartz surfacing, is headquartered in Shenzhen — a major city in the south of Southern China’s Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The area became China’s first, and one of the most successful, Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Kangli Stone Group comprises more than 3,000 employees and operates several production facilities throughout China. “We have built production bases in Shenzhen, Shuituo, Huidong and Tianjin, creating a huge production platform with a complete product structure to provide high-caliber products for large projects,” said President Rose Wang of Kangli Stone Group. Moreover, the company built locations in Shanghai and Beijing in 1997.

The factory in Shenzhen, which was opened in 1998, covers an area of 60,000 square meters and houses an impressive line-up of advanced stoneworking equipment from Italy and Spain as well as China’s most advanced profiled processing CNC machine tool and automatic grinding and polishing line. Among the Italian manufacturers are Breton, GMM and Pedrini. With the opening of this production facility, Kangli introduced itself as a manufacturer of quartz surfacing as well as natural stone. Its annual production rate at the Shenzhen plant includes 1.2 million square meters of stone slabs and 600,000 square meters of quartz surfacing, as well as 30,000 square meters of curved panels for columns.

Also in 1998, Kangli Xiamen was founded. “This marked the establishment of Kangli’s system of block trade support to engineering stone supply,” explained Wang.

Three years later, the 180,000-square-meter Shuitou plant — located in Shuitou Town, Nanan City, Fujian Province, which is known as the “hometown of stone” — was built. At this facility, Kangli manufactures 3.6 million square meters of stone slabs, 2 million square meters of quartz surfacing and 60,000 square meters of curved panels for columns. This operation is not only the largest among Kangli’s production facilities, but it is also considered to be the largest stone production and processing plant in China.

In Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, Kangli’s stone production facility spans 120,000 square meters and has an annual output of 1 million square meters of stone. According to the company, the facility opened in 2006, and has become China’s largest standard operation that focuses on quartz research and development, design, production and processing. Additionally, with an area of 160,000 square meters, the Tianjin facility is Kangli’s major strategic base in the north market as well as a new benchmark for stone production in North China, China and the world.

“Guided by the concept of ‘creating fine stones through high technology,’ we have purchased state-of-the art equipment from world manufacturers to effectively improve product quality,” explained Wang. “We saw blocks with Italy’s most advanced fully automatic large carborundum saws for granite and diamond saw for marble, grind and polish large slabs with fully automatic continuous grinding and polishing lines, cut dimension slabs with laser alignment cutters, give full play to the effect of marble slab patching with an Italian-produced fully automatic stereo vacuum patching line, process various complex products with Italian-produced electronic processing centers, produce [curved panels for columns] with Italian-imported NC wire saws, make complex parquet with a CNC waterjet and use a multifunctional column head and cap machines. New equipment and technologies have provided a strong guarantee for us to create more fine stones.”

Kangli Stone Group takes the environment seriously, which is evident in all of its production facilities. “We have established the most advanced water recycling systems and systems of comprehensive utilization of offcuts and waste residues, thus boosting utilization of resources and reducing environmental pollution,” explained Wang. The company’s efforts have been recognized by the society of local governments, and its plants have passed ISO14001 environmental management system certification. Its products have been honored as “designated products for green decoration” by the China Building Decoration Association, and Kangli has been identified by local governments as a model of green, intensification and sustainability.

Building a global system

“Based on the four production bases, we have launched operations in East China, North China, Central China and South China; have established branches in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Shuitou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hainan; have spread our sales network all over China; and are committed to conducting fine operations and offering professional customer-friendly services,” said Wang. Kangli has also established an independent mining company in Cenxi, Guangxi, with quality stone reserves of over 100 million cubic meters.

“Constant innovation is our eternal pursuit,” said Wang. “In response to the development of the times and industrial upgrading, we have prospectively planned and constructed a large, modern and all-round stone industry park engaged in stone production and processing, block reserve, stone sales, a stone trend exchange, a stone art show and stone art design. Xiamen Kangli Finance Plaza probes into the essence of ‘stone culture,’ experiments on the integration of stone with architectural art and decorative art, actively explores new trends of stones and has created an innovative stone operation mode.
In the scientific and information era, we have made simple, natural stone artistic with an open mind. We advance with the times, integrate new technologies with fashion to pioneer the trend of stones, and firmly believe we should benefit customers, nature and the world in order to become prosperous.”

Kangli Stone Group exports a variety of material to many parts of the world — especially in Europe, America, the Middle East, Russia and Southeast Asia. “In 2014, we exported $7 million to the U.S. and Canada,” said Wang. “This accounted for 38% of the total amount of exports.”

Wang went on to explain that early on the company built a global stone purchasing system by establishing resident purchase offices in countries such as Italy, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, India, Norway, Finland and the U.S. as well as major domestic stone-producing areas. “We have pooled quality resources from around the world and purchased fine stones in volume to ensure a raw material supply and stone quality at the source,” she said. “Dubbed as the ‘stone supermarket,’ we rank first in comprehensive reserves in the country with 400 stone varieties in stock, 60,000 cubic meters of blocks and 300,000 square meters of slab reserves — providing adequate resources for undertaking large decorative projects from home and abroad.”