Giorgio Conti (1928-2002) was an entrepreneur who, through his passion, determination and ability to visualise the future, was able to create a group that is today a world leader in the mining and marketing of stone material in blocks. Everything dates back to the early sixties when Giorgio Conti founded R.E.D. Graniti, a company that was involved in representing some varieties of granite that were little known at the time but would soon become points of reference for architecture worldwide.

It was in fact in the ‘70s that Giorgio Conti decided to revive the position of his company and make it grow by abandoning its marginal representative role and becoming a real trader, buying blocks to sell in its own commercial channels. In accordance with this new approach, in 1976 R.E.D. Graniti was the first Italian company to open its own office in India while in 1982 Pedreiras do Brasil was founded in Brazil.

When trading activities, too began to be limiting for the company's potential and its expansion, the necessary and inevitable step was taken to create its own supply sources, through the direct acquisition of quarries; which was no small feat, as the granite extraction basins were and still are, often located in inaccessible countries and geological areas where the extraction and transportation of the blocks presented considerable difficulties at the time.

Although aware of how ambitious and risky the project was, Giorgio Conti firmly believed in the possibility of success, aware of the fact that, a highly structured international organisation would have been necessary to have direct control over the raw materials, and so that is what happened.

Today, R.E.D. Graniti is a multinational, fruit of the vision and managerial capacity of its founder, and a world leader in the sector of excavation and marketing of stone material in blocks, managing over thirty quarries located in the key places of world production of stone material: Brazil, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Zimbabwe, USA, Namibia and Madagascar.

Giorgio Conti passed away in 2002 and the following year, the Giorgio Conti Foundation was founded by his daughters Franca and Daniela. The Foundation was created to carry on with the vision of Giorgio Conti, a man who, in addition to having been a passionate and determined entrepreneur, always showed a great sensitivity to social solidarity, to the protection and safeguarding of human and artistic values, which will therefore continue through the actions of the Foundation.