23-Camborne Slate Ltd Slate material slate roofing tiles News 050607

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Camborne Slate Ltd - a measure of real quality

• Product: Camborne Slate’s differentiation from other suppliers of Brazilian slate

The resurgence in use of slate brought about by demand for natural building materials shows no sign of abating. Even so, the extent of slate’s use as a roofing material over the past 15 years has owed much to a latent demand kept in check for decades by the high cost of home produced material. The resulting influx of slate from sources throughout the world has brought prices down, but in the process quality, durability and reliability have come into question.
Camborne Slate, which established its mining operation in Brazil over 20 years ago, continues to be by far the biggest importer of that country’s slate. It supplies for both residential and commercial projects and was the first UK company to achieve compliance with BS EN12326, contributing also to the Standard’s content. As a consequence, all Camborne® branded Brazilian slate comes with a 50-year guarantee, supported by evidence of the company’s environmental and employment standards. Managing Director Simon Ditchfield commented “The issue of sustainability has encouraged architects to demand proof from manufacturers that workers overseas are not being exploited. We support this wholeheartedly as our outright ownership of the slate quarrying operation in Brazil has enabled us to control every aspect of extraction, finishing and health and safety standards. Other suppliers often make such claims with no basis in fact, even to the point of misrepresenting their products as ‘Camborne’ grade. Having ownership of the Camborne trademark it is a continual fight against those companies selling by price while suggesting their products are like-for-like”.
Telling good slate from bad has undoubtedly resulted in the sale of poor quality Brazilian material against Camborne’s. As with any Standard, BS EN12326 may not be of great interest to builders and roofers, but they should be aware that it does now provide a real measure of quality which anyone can use as a benchmark. Importantly, it has already begun to prompt questions from clients and specifiers about product performance.
Despite this, prejudice and general misinformation about Brazilian slate remains. It is, for example, commonly said to be very hard, making it difficult for roofers to work with. Growing familiarity with Camborne’s material, however, arising from a strong merchant base (including Buildbase) has put its durability, consistency of shape, colour and textural appearance into true perspective. A client base which extends from major house builders to commercial projects such as Eurostar*, Tesco, and Sainsbury says much for the standards Camborne material has had to meet. Conservation bodies and planners too, seeking product with strong similarities in appearance and composition to UK material dating from the Victorian era, have been satisfied that their stringent performance criteria can be met.
Roofers and merchants constantly benefit from support such as provision of fixing specifications, but it is the company’s depth of technical and product knowledge, including its geology, which has enabled it to maintain such consistent quality. Cornish mining engineers selected the Parapoeba Valley in Brazil from quarrying locations throughout the world as the long-term source for supply to the UK. The slate is found in an area consisting mainly of savannah type grassland and is among the purest in the world. Even so, there are many areas of analysis to be undertaken if quality is to be maintained. These involve x-ray fluorescence and diffraction tests for mineral and chemical quality, which have to be carried out throughout the extraction and packaging processes. The machinery used to extract and split is also of the company’s own patented design.
For the user, slates are all pre-holed, and though production is focussed on three standard sizes, 600 x 300, 500 x 250 and 400 x 200mm, bespoke commissions are regularly undertaken. Affordable black and grey angle ridges are now available where once this would have involved use of products at over four times the cost. With three UK warehouses having in excess of 1000 tonnes of roofing and flooring slate in stock at any one time, customers can be assured of access to a long-lasting, cost-effective source of natural slate for decades to come.
Camborne is now also importing material from China, again from a single source and to similar employment standards as that from Brazil. The smooth, mid-grey slates are of 5mm nominal thickness and supplied in two sizes, 600x300mm and 500x250mm. Both are available with slates and a half, to avoid cutting.
It may yet take some time before we reach a point where importers of material unsuited to the UK’s environment find their products and guarantees rejected. Meanwhile Camborne has seen no failure of slates sourced from Brazil since its operation began.
* Platforms of the new St Pancras station

Email: sales@camborneslate.com