While not wishing to be guilty of Business Minister Baroness Vadera’s sin of seeing the possibility of bright spots among the economic gloom, there was just a little bit of good news in the stone industry after Christmas from Adrian Phillips of Black Mountain Quarries as he took on three extra people at the company’s headquarters in Pontrilis, Herefordshire.

Black Mountain extract their own stone from three quarries. They added the third with the takeover of the red sandstone Callow Quarry at Buckholt, between Monmouth and Hereford, in 2007. Adrian told NSS: “We have hit a lovely seam now. It’s a very nice, unique brown colour – a bit darker than St Bees. It’s cutting really sweetly.”

Adrian says Black Mountain have not been immune from the downturn. They have always sold less expensive imported stone as well as the stone they quarry themselves and are happy to do so because buying it in is less work than extracting and processing their own. But they say sales of the imports have fallen.

However, as they gradually fell they were offset by a steady increase in sales of the UK stone.

“It’s the more discerning people who still have the spending money,” says Adrian.

It is because extracting and processing their own stone is harder work than simply buying in stone from abroad that they have had to take on extra people.

However, Adrian admits he had had some worries about Callow Quarry. “We had moved and cut and moved and cut. I was beginning to lose faith. But we have hit it now and can be confident of our product.”