Marshalls have bought six northern sandstone quarries and a reconstituted walling stone plant from Ennstone Building Products.

Marshalls will operate the concrete walling plant but the dimensional stone quarries, with a processing plant at Stainton, are to become part of the Stancliffe dimensional stone business based in Derbyshire. Stancliffe are owned by Marshalls. The former Ennstone businesses add about 50 people to 150 employed by Stancliffe.

The acquisition adds the sandstones of Darney, High Nick, Talkin Fell, Bank End (St Bees stone) and Doddington, as well as Stainton, to the Stancliffe stable.

Mike Jones, general manager at Stancliffe, says there is not currently much stone coming out of the former Ennstone quarries but that the acquisition strengthens Stancliffe\'s position in terms of reserves.

He told NSS that the quarries would increase the portfolio of stones on offer from Stancliffe and strengthen the company in the market place. "We want to be in the forefront of this industry," he said.

Ennstone said in their preliminary results in March and again at an extraordinary general meeting in May, held to discuss a proposal to raise £47million with a share placing, that they had been reviewing the possibility of disposing of certain non-core assets from the group\'s building materials division and the decision had been taken to dispose of the Burford and Stainton reconstituted stone works. Burford has yet to be sold.

Ennstone still operate the DeLank granite quarry in Cornwall, which they say has a healthy order book and is still very much part of their business.