World Wide Stone Corp. has been positioned for growth by company founders within the past several years; modernized and refreshed equipment in its factory for Filled and Old World Honed™ products; and added equipment to its factory producing its Truly Tumbled™ material, resulting in a 250% capacity increase. While the factories were being upgraded, exploration for new stone deposits began in the Mexican countryside using satellite imaging. This is the first step in the discovery process of World Wide Stone’s newest veins of Durango Stone™.

Quarry exploration

Management uses satellite images to read the Earth’s stone formations to give its prospectors an idea of where to begin searching. Thousands of square acres are analyzed in the process of exploration. For example, approximately 25,000 acres explored may yield nothing, or up to an acre of deposit for industrialization. Teams inspect the land and begin taking surface samples in areas showing potential. If surface samples are promising, core drilling begins to locate and examine the mass.

In conjunction with physical inspection, it is imperative that indigenous native Mexicans on the land are educated and included in the deposit discovery. When considering how native people - who have lived on the land for years - respond to the quarry process, World Wide Stone invests in building relationships with the family heads to improve the village lifestyle and create a mutually beneficial business partnership. “Our company takes the future of indigenous people on the land it works with great importance, assisting in developing infrastructure to serve both their needs and World Wide Stone’s,” according to the firm. “The company retains legal representation for benefit of the parties to create appropriate documentation with officials, including the Mexican government. Local villagers are offered employment in further exploration, in the clearing of routes to the stone deposits and in developing quarries.”

The process of understanding what the deposit may yield as a quarry is tedious, requiring a highly trained eye to understand the geology of the land and the acquired samples. The prospectors analyze the samples, and when the results are promising, the real job of exploration with the view to industrialization begins. If the larger samples that are initially extracted yield similar material as the smaller samples and core nuclei, a quarry is “discovered,” and the surgical extraction process begins. World Wide Stone hires groups to explore outcroppings from the main deposit and to bring back samples while the main deposit is quarried.

World Wide Stone has a highly effective system in this area, which incorporates several measures to minimize the impact on the land and the environment. The natural vegetation that is cleared for the roads is kept to a bare minimum. Once roads are no longer used, nature recovers the land at a rapid pace.

Processing

Large blocks, weighing approximately 35,000 to 50,000 pounds, are cut out of the deposit and hauled via trucks to the company’s factories in Durango, Mexico. Waste materials at the company’s quarries and factories are harmonious with nature and consist primarily of calcium carbonate, water and mud. In fact, about 90% of the water used in production at its factories is recycled, cleaned and returned to its systems. Local farmers use the calcium carbonate as clean landfill and animal feed.

The company’s three main Durango factories receive the quarry blocks and the production process begins, focusing on creating Filled and Old World Honed™ tiles, Truly Tumbled™ tiles, accent pieces, mesh-mounted mosaic patterns, custom and slab components.

The company’s complete vertical integration allows it to manage the entire process - from quarrying in the field, to production of its exclusive Durango Stone™ product lines in its factories, to distribution using stocking distributors across North America and beyond the continent.

World Wide Stone is currently exploring 25,000 acres at one of its newer quarry locations and about 50,000 acres in its newest site. “The really exciting thing about exploring the land for natural stone deposits is that each block of travertine is truly a gift of nature,” according to the company. “The geology and color of the stone differs within each block in the quarry. This is the excitement and challenge of delivering Authentic Durango Stone™ to the marketplace. World Wide Stone Corp. is committed to continuing the search for stone deposits each day to bring the most exciting stone products to the market.”