Bringing Africa to America
Mulder Family Promotes Africa Range® Granite from Namibia
Torin Dixon
Special Correspondent
For those of us working in and around the dimensional stone industry, one of the more interesting aspects to our trade is the continuous introduction of new stone colors from quarries and factories around the world.
As enterprising quarry owners and investors develop new stone resources from nearly every nation, homeowners and architects have even more choices of uniquely colored decorative stone to work with.
Such was the case in 2000 when an enterprising family from South Africa introduced beautiful African granite colors to America. 
Since 1980, Louwrens Mulder has been in the stone industry in South Africa and beginning in 2000 the entire Mulder family has been promoting Africa Range® granite from Namibia to the world. The family’s goal is to bring Africa to America with their unique line of beautiful, affordable granite. Growing up exposed to the stone industry, their son, Jaco Mulder, followed his father’s interests and began trading in various granites and exploring other granite resources in Namibia.
This exploring, prospecting, and surveying led to the development of the Africa Range® products.
Louwrens’s wife Riana is now in charge of Business Development in North America, while he is General Manager of North American operations. Their son is CEO and based in Namibia, overseeing all quarry and factory operations, insuring that their world-class standards are protected.
For those of us based in the western United States, we may not have had extensive exposure to the Africa Range® of granite colors, even though the east coast has seen a variety of more than 20 colors for over a decade. Now with the elder Mulder’s in control of all rights to promote these unique colors in North America, we are beginning to see major Importers and Distributors pick up these beautiful exotic colors of granite throughout the U.S.
You may be surprised to hear, as was I, that since the inception of the Africa Range® line of granites, that “Best Practices” have been implemented to insure the highest quality in quarrying and processing of blocks and slabs, and to protect this very unique habitat.
Starting with the permitting process for the quarries, world-class environmental controls were established to protect the surrounding environment and to insure that very high yields were achieved minimizing the impact to the surroundings.
With a relatively new government in place (since 1990), the people of Namibia are extremely protective of their natural resources, and this extends not only to their diverse wildlife, but to something as rather mundane as rock quarries.
The Mulders not only welcomed such high environmental standards, but insisted from the very beginning that recycling of water and all resources be maintained.
Louwrens Mulder is the inventor of the Tomahawk Stone Splitter marketed and sold by Braxton-Bragg and a proponent of recycling at every level, particularly in fabrication shops here in America.
Using diamond wire saws–and never using explosives of any type since the quarries opened to extract blocks–helps to achieve these quality and environmental goals.
Additionally, all 3cm slabs produced in Namibia are cut on multi-wire saws, and polished on state of the art Breton polishing lines, thus minimizing stresses to the slabs and insuring each slab meets the Mulder’s world-class quality goals.
Currently the Africa Range consists of more that twenty colors with a few favorites for American consumption including: Niagara Gold, African Ivory, Sagebrush and Ivory Coast to name a few. More than ten colors are regularly imported to the U.S. And I was surprised to hear that the geology is quite diverse with small grain granites to very course grained patterns to choose from.
Most of the colors range in the popular earth tone palette, making them easy to incorporate into diverse design options. Not only are there varied colors, but different patterns and veining are also available. All slabs produced are resin sealed with Tenax impregnators to enhance colors and to insure strength and quality of finishes.
As with many products, there are the originals and the imitators, and this dynamic is certainly true of the Africa Range® granite line.
Each color from Africa Range® is trademarked and internationally protected, but there have been some imitators trying to capitalize on these unique and beautiful colors of Namibian granite.
The Mulders are quite certain that they control the vast majority of all granite coming out of Namibia, but warn specifiers to make certain their granite comes from Africa Range® to be certain that quality and environmental standards are achieved.
You may also be surprised to find that even though these unique colors of granite come from the southwestern tip of Africa, that the prices are very competitive with Brazilian and Indian granite colors.
However, the unique colors, patterns and world-class quality standards included, the high yields help the Africa Range® granites to be extremely price competitive in this tough economic environment.
Even though these granite colors are uniquely African, Louwrens Mulder is proud that he has recently become a naturalized U.S. citizen and calls America his new home.
For more information about the Africa Range® line of granites, please contact Riana Mulder at the Nashville office (615) 852-0827, or visit their website at: http://africarange.com.
Torin Dixon is a 35-year dimensional stone industry veteran and may be reached at info@torindixon.com.