Hot on the heels of Llandraw quarry, Black Mountain have acquired Callow quarry at Buckholt, between Monmouth and Hereford.

This is their third quarry and, announcing the latest acquisition, Managing Director Adrian Phillips says: "We are delighted to add the Callow quarry\'s red sandstone products to our product range.

"Callow quarry is a major producer of local Herefordshire / Monmouthshire red sandstone, which features in so many local buildings."

Callow quarry\'s red sandstone joins the company\'s existing Craswall and Llandraw operations to offer a choice of local building stones, flagstones and roofing stone, which complement the company\'s range of imported stones.

Black Mountain Quarries promoted their range at the Natural Stone Show at ExC eL last year, where a vistor described the company as a \'supermarket for stone\'. Adrian Phillips took it as a compliment as he says supermarkets provide good quality products at competitive prices.

Callow quarry covers an area of seven acres and has reserves estimated at over a million tonnes.

Initially, the new quarry will produce block stone and cropped building stone. There are plans to add a range of coursed building stone.

"Callow quarry widens our range of local stone and compliments our existing range of local and imported building stone, giving our customers a choice of 18 stone colours," says Sales & Marketing Manager Martin Howlett.

Black Mountain Quarries are a family-owned business started by Adrian Phillips five years ago in a quarry on his family\'s land.

They have primarily supplied imported stones to match traditional British stones, but say there is still demand for British stone.

"Generally people working on heritage properties and conservation properties are quite keen to use local stone rather than imported," says Martin. "But if they haven\'t got the budget we have the less expensive imported range as well."

They have now bought two Wells Wellcut saws to process the stone.

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