Feature: Caesarstone Quartz Surfaces

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Domenic Oppedisano, the COO of Caesarstone. Does the name “Caesarstone” ring a bell? If you have purchased a new home recently, there is a very good chance that your countertop is made from a high quality quartz surface manufactured by Caesarstone. With Oppedisano, we discussed the Caesarstone brand, the process of creating a quartz surface, and the importance of the homebuilding industry to their company.

NewInHomes (NIH): Tell us a little about Caesarstone as a company.

Domenic Oppedisano (DO): What many people don’t know is that we’re a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Globally, we’re about 850 employees. We have wholly owned subsidiaries in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Singapore, and Israel, and we are distributed in about 43 other countries. People often think we’re a small stone company, but when you dig a little deeper, there’s quite a substantial business behind us.

We invented the quartz product back in 1987. We pioneered the process of manufacturing quartz slabs, along with the Italian manufacturing of resin, and we’re the first to use that technology in 20 some-odd years. We’re an Israel-based company, and from a company perspective within the building materials industry, we’ve probably been one of the fastest growing companies. On a global basis, when most companies were retrenching, we were posting a year over year growth – I’d say for the past 10 years.

NIH: What is the process of creating a quartz surface?

DO: It’s like baking a cake. The way not all cakes are made the same, different companies use different ingredients. For us, all of our product ranges from 90-93% quartz, and the rest is resin and colouring. We actually have one the highest ratios within the industry, if not the highest. It’s the combination of high quality quartz, high quality resins, and high quality colours that really give us our properties; Caesarstone product is scratch-resistant, heat-resistant, and stain-resistant. Our surfaces are accompanied by a lifetime warranty to back that up, and we support that warranty through a manufacturer technical service team. So once you register your warranty online, if there are ever any issues, you’re able to contact us at Caesarstone directly with any possible issues you have. And I think for the homeowner, especially when you’re buying a new home, it offers some peace of mind to know that you have a lifetime warranty on your kitchen countertop or for your surface.

So, what happens is we take the quartz, the resin, and the colour, and we mix it and put it into a mold. This mixture is then compressed, it goes through a vibration process, and then a vacuum process. What we do is press out any of the air pockets, vacuum them out, and once we’ve done that, it goes through an oven, and that’s what we call the curing process. Once the slab cools, it’s calibrated to make sure it has the proper thickness and dimensions, and then finally, it’s polished.

One of the most amazing steps in our process is that every single slab is quality control checked by an individual. So it’s not a machine process that checks it; literally every single slab that comes off the production line goes into a quality check room where it’s checked against a control sample for pattern, for colour, for thickness, and for size, and only then is it shipped.

NIH: Why does Caesarstone specialize in quartz?

DO: From the stonemasons’ perspective or our stone fabricators, it’s very consistent to work with in that it cuts very clean and it polishes very clean. It’s nature’s strongest material – it’s resistant to stains, cracks, scratches, and everyday life.

As for the homeowners’ perspective, we consider ourselves to be in the fashion industry. We sell colour, we sell design. Some companies do that through paint colour, some do it through fabrics and textiles, we just happen to do it through stone. So we’re really conscientious about always looking to future colours, new developments, understanding what trends there are in the fashion and design industry, and then creating colours to meet those needs. Any given year, our R&D (research and development) department will introduce 60 new colours that are based on colour trends and market research, and what we see in the design industry.

NIH: What does Caesarstone use for colour? Is it just dyes?

DO: It’s a variety of different elements. Some of our slabs can have reflective crystals dropped in them, some can have a pigmentation added to them, and then we actually have a lot of proprietary technology that creates design. Right now, one of our most successful lines is called our Supernatural Collection, which has a very authentic natural look and feel to it, and what we’ve done with that collection is using the proprietary technology within Caesarstone is create a beautiful veined pattern within the slab. The biggest thing is that all of our slabs are NSS approved. So they’re a food safe preparation surface. Whether it’s in your home, or in a restaurant, a commercial space, or an institutional space, it’s an NSS approved surface.

NIH: You’re obviously very active in the homebuilding industry. What builders and developers have you worked with?

DO: We’ve probably, at any given time, touched on every major builder in the GTA. Right now, we have active projects within the high-rise industry with Liberty Development, Tridel, and Pemberton. Then on the low-rise side, we’re working a lot with Monarch and Mattamy. You can walk into almost any decor centre right now and you’ll see a Caesarstone display.

NIH: Are there any other uses for a Caesarstone surace besides countertops?

DO: We’re the manufacturer of the slabs. We don’t actually supply finished countertops to the building community; we supply our slabs to our Caesarstone dealer network, our fabricators, our kitchen and bath dealers, and they in turn take the slab and create the finished countertop product. But even in the building community, it hasn’t been limited to just horizontal surfaces.

Our product is offered in three thicknesses: one centimetre, two centimetre, and three centimetre. The one-centimetre-thick product allows for wall cladding — we’re seeing this done a lot, especially in the bathroom. In a lot of the custom houses that are being finished now, what they’re doing is complementing their Caesarstone countertop with, say, the whole shower cladded in Caesarstone, or the bathtub wall cladded in Caesarstone. We’re really seeing our product become a true horizontal and vertical surface in a lot of houses and condominiums.

NIH: Some of the projects listed online are pretty high profile, such as the World Cup stadium in South Africa. What do you think is the most interesting or exciting project in which Caesarstone has been involved?

DO: On a global scale, I’d say you hit the nail on the head with the stadium. That came out of our SA operation, and that’s what makes us interesting as a company. We truly are a global business, so we take design inspiration from all around the world. Whether it’s Australia, the U.S,. South Africa, Israel, Europe, we really get to do a lot of really cool things. And we get to learn from that and we get to share those stories.

What was really exciting in Toronto recently, at the IDS show — and this isn’t necessarily a project per se on a commercial or any construction scale — but we recently partnered up with a Japanese design firm, Nendo. Nendo is headed up by a Canadian-born individual named Oki Sato, and right now in the design world, he’s a rock star. We did an installation with him for IDS called The Stone Garden. Sato took a product that you would normally see as a kitchen countertop, which is mostly what our product is used for, and he created a beautiful art installation with it; it received great reviews. The project demonstrated the flexibility of our surfaces; it could be a kitchen countertop one day, and a beautiful art installation the next.

NIH: How important is the home-building industry to Caesarstone?

DO: We call on a few different markets. We service the kitchen and bath industry, for the homeowners looking to renovate. A lot of our material is used in the renovation retrofit business, but a lot of our product is being driven through the builder community. It’s being driven for a few reasons: one is that we’re actively servicing the builder community on the benefits of using Caesarstone. We do an effective job of explaining to them the ‘Why Caesarstone?’ value proposition. In the building community, a lot of times when you’re dealing with an actual stone product and homeowners are selecting it in the decor centre, what you see in the sample isn’t always what you get. So there’s a big benefit to the building community to use our product because what you see is what you get.

We also see a lot of the demand within the builder community being driven by the consumer and the homeowner. So people looking for a new home are looking not only for a certain brand of appliances or kitchen cabinetry, but they’re looking specifically for Caesarstone countertops. So in that vein, for us, the Ontario building community is a very important part of our overall business, and one that we feel we’re servicing quite well.

We would like to thank Domenic Oppedisano for chatting with us about Caesarstone and their role in the new homebuilding industry. Keep an eye out for an infographic about Caesarstone that we will release later this week!

We would like to thank Domenic Oppedisano for chatting with us about Caesarstone and their role in the new homebuilding industry. Keep you eye out for an infographic about Caesarstone that we will release later this week!    

To learn more about what Caesarstone has to offer, visit their website here!