Hard landscapers Charcon believe that expanding their range of British stone paving can help them achieve 10-12% growth this year. They have teamed up with stone specialists Fairhurst to reach their target.
Landscape architects used to the uniformity of concrete products can be unaware that stone is most cost effective when it is used in random lengths, so there is less waste. It is to introduce that sort of knowledge that Charcon like to be involved with projects at the design stage.
“Our approach is to educate specifiers and work with our customers to get the most out of the stone we produce for them. We’ll explain to them the cost and yield advantages we will all benefit from if they use random length instead of dimensional two-way products, for example,” says Steve Hook, who has been appointed by Charcon as their Commercial Manager of Natural Stone.
Charcon, the commercial hard landscaping arm of Aggregate Industries, have decided to increase their stance in natural stone, especially UK and other European stones, and have now added York stone paving from Aggregate Industries’ Whitworth Quarry to their natural stone range.
They want specifiers to visit the quarry and the processing centre where the blocks are converted into paving so they get a better understanding of the process and will, hopefully, get an insight into how to use stone to best advantage in hard landscaping. “If they haven’t seen a quarry – and very few of them have – they find it fascinating,” says Steve.
Charcon offer a design service to all their customers to help them with value engineering and are even trying to improve the level of knowledge about stone among the next generation of designers by giving lectures to the final year landscaping students at the University of Sheffield.
As reported in the March issue of NSS, stone company E&M Fairhurst & Son of Kirkby Lonsdale, Lancashire, who employ 30 people, are extracting and processing the York stone paving for Charcon.
Charcon are an independent business unit not only within Aggregate Industries but also the international cement and aggregates giant Holcim, the AI parent whose sales last year were nearly US$21billion. “Customers like to use people like us with a big group behind us,” says Steve. “It can give them confidence.”
Whitworth Quarry is on Hunters Hill in Yorkshire and the stone is being sold as Hunters Hill paving in both diamond sawn and flamed finishes.
Whitworth Quarry covers about 250acres high on the Yorkshire moors. It stretches from Whitworth to Bacup – a distance of about 5miles. Steve Hook has traced its use back 120 years, but there are signs of earlier workings. This durable and weather resistant predominantly blue and mixed colour sandstone must have been extracted for building since man first occupied this region millennia ago.
The beds of the sandstone suitable for paving are 2-5m high, but because the quarry was previously operated by Aggregate Industries for aggregate production and was, therefore, blasted, the first major task was to clear out the blast-shocked stone.
Steve, who once worked for Marshalls, knows the difference in culture between aggregate producers and block producers and decided it would be quicker to team up with someone who already understood block rather than try to get aggregate people to learn about block production – hence the arrangement with Fairhurst Stone.
Edward Fairhurst, who runs the stone company, has grown up with dimensional stone and had already worked with Aggregate Industries – he also extracts the block from High Moor Quarry in Derbyshire, now predominantly a landfill site, and processes it into paving for Charcon. He also operates Darley Dale in Derbyshire, currently not in production although he intends to start working there again later this year.
Before the current arrangement was reached, there had been some projects where Fairhurst Stone supplied High Moor stone as paving to Aggregate Industries and when Charcon wanted to expand their natural stone range “we tapped into Edward’s ability to source stone and process it,” says Steve.
Charcon had noted a steady increase in demand for British and other European stone for hard landscaping projects over the past four or five years. They import and sell stone from the Far East, as well as a range of concrete-based products, but feel there is big growth potential for the natural product.
They forecast the expansion in stone will give them 10-12% growth this year. Edward Fairhurst says: “The general market demand for natural stone paving products is not too bad at the moment.”
Charcon have restructured their natural stone range into three sections: UK stones; European stones; World stones. They have made this distinction so there is a clear understanding by anyone buying the paving of where the materials has come from. They say they will be leading with British stone but will always be “ruthlessly honest and explain the pros and cons of all the products they sell”.
They have added other British stones to their range, including Caithness, being supplied by John Sutherland of Caithness Stone Industries in Scotland, and Welsh slate from Welsh//Slate in Bangor.
They looked at some Italian limestone, but decided against it because it polishes too quickly in use, raising issues of slip resistance. They have traditionally supplied granite setts from Portugal and are now also importing Portuguese granite paving.
They have added Mourne granite from Ireland and porphyry from Italy and there are plans to use more of Aggregate Industries’ quarries for block production. A buff York stone is expected to join the range soon and Aggregate Industries own Kemnay Quarry in Scotland, producers of one of the granites on the Scottish Parliamentary Building. “You think: surely there’s an opportunity to introduce that to the English market,” says Steve.
One of the drivers for the use of British and European stone is the shortening time scale of projects – not to mention the flexibility of schedules when a project is under way.
Customers are reluctant to forward-order and when they push the button they want materials quickly. Charcon have started building up stocks of a range of standard products so they can offer the required response. “It’s a challenge for all natural stone producers,” says Steve.
Fairhurst are able to cope with the flexibility of supply because they have the whole process in-house, from quarrying to haulage using their own fleet of four articulated six axle trucks.
Customers also want to know the same stone will be available in the future. Charcon have lately won the contract to supply 4,000m2 of Hunters Hill paving to Retford, in Nottinghamshire, where a guarantee was required that the stone would be available for the next 10 years, so that future schemes will match. With 44million tonnes of consented reserves at Hunters Hill, Charcon are certainly confident about continuity and they offered the client independent verification that they really were supplying English stone, which kept others who weren’t out of the equation.
Some imported stones have not survived the test of time. A lack of knowledge by suppliers and clients has meant stone has been used without appropriate testing and it has not performed well. It has put a question mark over Far Eastern stone in the minds of some clients, especially with the difference in price diminishing with the weakness of sterling and the increasing price of shipping. And prices of products from China and India can only continue to increase with the growing prosperity of those nations.
Interestingly, although Charcon have their own environmental statements and ethical trading policies, they have not gone beyond that.
Steve says there is not enough clarity in the way the ‘greenness’ of stone is currently measured, with different frameworks being used that lead to inconsistencies.
“If you’re not careful, all stone is going to be tarnished with a bad name and any good that might come from this issue is going to be lost.”
Charcon have good, long-term relationships with many major contractors and with the expanding stone range are very much involved with specifiers and local authorities. “We’re getting a good, positive response.”