As a strong player in the natural stone industry for almost three decades, Tab Surfaces has significant experience and know-how when it comes to technology and meeting the demands of their customers’ needs. Brothers Amit and Sumit Gupta founded the company in 1997, and since grew it to include 20 quarries, multiple fabrication facilities, and recently, a second quartz surfacing line.
“We always had a plan to expand, but we wanted to wait until this whole tariff situation went away,” explained Sumit Gupta, managing director of the Bangalore, India-based company. “Our primary business is natural stone, which is very well established for the past 27 years and has built us our brand name.”
While natural stone remains a primary market for Tab, in recent years it has devoted time and energy to developing a reputable quartz line. After the success of its first one, Tab is now ready to introduce a second line.
“The idea was to come up with something brand new and cutting edge,” said Gupta. “We can give people the same properties of quartz with full-body veining, but also give them something more exciting to look at.”
According to Gupta, the new line is the result of a Breton processing plant combined with proprietary technology. “We are now going full tilt with our second line, which is more than a second line,” he said. “It is a line and a half. A primary line produces regular colors and there is another line running parallel to produce only long-vein colors. We added a very new technology that will allow us to make quartzite-like colors.
“The quartzite look is very contemporary right now,” Gupta went on to say. “Everyone wants quartzites from Brazil. Everyone is looking for more than a Carrara or Calacatta look.”
Gupta explained Tab designed the press themselves. “Our new press is better and stronger than before,” he said. “We wanted to bring to quartz a never-before-seen level of polish so that it starts to look like natural stone. Some manufacturers keep the polish more dull to hide the defects. Our quartz has always been at the highest density and highest gloss levels in our category. Our gloss levels used to be between 60 and 85. Now with the new press, we will even catch gloss levels as high as 90. And maybe even more – we don’t know yet.”
With a higher density, the new quartz product will be easier for fabricators to cut, said Gupta. “Because of the high density, the slabs don’t have any hard/soft pockets within the slab so the cutting blade doesn’t get confused,” he said, adding they will be producing super jumbo sizes too. “We are starting to produce 350 x 200 cm or 135 x 79 inches.”
With a state-of-the-art facility housing multiple robots and CNC machinery, Tab plans to triple its capacity. “We are going to make more than 400 slabs per day, in addition to what we make now,” said Gupta. “There is a lot of technology. We will be manufacturing more than 10,000 to 11,000 additional slabs per month in addition to what we are already producing.”
Technology has also allowed Tab to use a film on the slabs that is statically charged. “It makes it very easy to take off,” said Gupta. “Fabricators don’t have to waste time fighting with it and cleaning the glue off the slabs.”
In addition to offering an extreme high-gloss finish, Tab’s quartz slabs are also available in honed and leathered surfaces. TABQuartz is also UV resistant and has very high resistance to scratching.
“We have a care and maintenance guide that we share with all our clients,” said Gupta. “Also, we have cut-to-size capability. We have been doing cut-to-size projects in natural stone since we started. Our know-how allows us to add that capacity.”
Tab started producing slabs from its second quartz at the end of October/early November. “We should be ready for commercial production by the end of November,” said Gupta.
