Nero Impala -Dorking Africa (pty) Ltd

Finstone’s Nero Impala® quarries are established in the oldest area of dimension stone mining activity in a 20km long outcrop running from north of Marikana to north of Rustenburg. These quarries produce the highly sought after Nero Impala® material on which the reputation in the international market has been built since the early 1960s, and which has led to Nero Impala®’s position as the largest volume source of granite in the world. The newer operations producing Nero Africa material are situated further east towards Brits. While Nero Africa is similar in appearance to Nero Impala® and has the polishing and other physical characteristics of the traditional material, the quality differs from the classical Nero Impala®. Finstone's Nero Impala® and Nero Africa quarrying operations spread West to East over an area of 60 km2 providing an important volume component of about 90 000 m3 of the 150 000 m3 or over 600 000 tons of Nero Impala® and Nero Africa granite traded annually. Initially, there was very little mechanisation and tower cranes were used to extract the blocks from the loose surface boulders. As the accessible surface boulders were quarried out and demand increased, expanding mortar, mechanisation and specialised diamond wire sawing technology was introduced to access the underlying 'solid' formations.