Ten quarries have been shut down in Najran as prices slumped due to presence of cheap Chinese products. Granite manufacturers called for protecting local products against dumping by Chinese products which don't comply with pertinent standards and specifications. They said there are many technical aspects about the manufacture of granite, and consumers are not aware of these. “Consumers are cheated because of their ignorance.” Saudi products meet the global specifications and all pertinent standards. Moreover, their prices are moderate when compared with the prices of products imported from China, manufacturers pointed out. Ali Muhammad, owner of a factor, said locally-manufactured granite are a way better than the Chinese one in terms of life expectancy. “Chinese granite don't keep the glossy look for long and it's not thick enough. But consumers don't know this fact as they only care about prices.” Chinese granite, which represent 40 percent of the total national market, are priced 50 percent lower than that of the Saudi counterpart. Manufacturers have called on the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) to protect Saudi products. Tariq Koshak, economic expert, said China's dumping policy seeks to control the Saudi market amid the low levels of awareness on the part of consumers. “Consumers don't know the difference and they choose Chinese granite because it's cheaper. More factories will be shut down if the situation continues. The Saudi granite sector, which manufactures and exports products around the world, might shift to importing products due to this dumping policy.” Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals (phenocrysts) are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic texture is sometimes known as a porphyry. Granites can be pink to gray in color, depending on their chemistry and mineralogy. By definition, granite is an igneous rock with at least 20 percent quartz by volume. Granite differs from granodiorite in that at least 35 percent of the feldspar in granite is alkali feldspar as opposed to plagioclase; it is the alkali feldspar that gives many granites a distinctive pink color. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors and rounded massifs.
