Granite is a beautiful material that has many used in the world today and is a material that is as old as the world itself.

The word granite literally translated comes from the word grain due to the grain that can be see within the stone itself. Granite is formed by the cooling of magma in the earths crust. Granite is usually a medium to course grained texture.

Granite is mined across the world with many quarries located in Finland, Spain, Norway, China, India, Africa and Brazil although they can be found all across the world.

Granite is predominately comprised of the minerals quartz, mica, feldspar and plagioclase feldspar and is an igneous rock. It is the composition and varying amounts of these minerals that give granite its unique look and varying colours. The average density of granite is between 2.65 and 2.75 g/cm3. It is he proportions of these minerals as well as the size of the grains within the rock that make each granite worktop unique. The density of granite is what makes it such a hard material making is very resilient to scratches, heat and stains which makes it perfect for a kitchen work surface. Granite has many uses throughout the residential and commercial market including worktops, flooring, cladding and headstones due to the fact it can withstand centuries of abuse and weathering.

Aberdeen in Scotland, which is constructed principally from local granite, is known as "The Granite City". Because of its abundance, granite was commonly used to build foundations for homes in New England. The Granite Railway, America's first railroad, was built to haul granite from the quarries in Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Neponset River in the 1820s. With increasing amounts of acid rain in parts of the world, granite has begun to supplant marble as a monument material, since it is much more durable.

To extract the granite from a quarry digging, cutting and blasting techniques are used. Granite quarries can be huge and the excavation of the granite can go very deep. The mining process involves many workers and some very specialist huge pieces of equipment in order to mine and move the massive pieces of granite from the earth.

Once the granite is removed from the earth it needs to be cut to size. The granite is usually cut into manageable slabs for transport and storage. This is done using huge saws to create the smaller slabs. Once cut one side of the slabs are polished by using a combination of grinding and polishing machinery and finally the slabs are ready for shipment. The slabs can then be cut down further to the appropriate size for granite kitchen worktops, bathroom vanity tops or flooring and wall tiles. The thickness of the slabs that are cut can vary on the indented use of the stone. For example a granite kitchen worktop would usually be cut 30mm thick, whereas an upstand or splashback would be 20mm thick and granite tiles can be as thin as 10mm.