A new team led by former Ennstone managing director Phil Hutchins has taken over production of Woodkirk sandstone from Britannia Quarries at Morley, near Leeds.

The previous operators, Woodkirk Stone Ltd, run by Eddie Hodge, went into administration in January (see NSS February issue).

With Phil Hutchins, who was a regional director of RMC before joining Ennstone as they were taking over quarry-owners and engineers Johnston, is Gwyn Williams, who was once company secretary at Tarmac, and Simon Gibbs, with a background in quarry management with Tarmac and RMC.

The management buy-in has been funded by Leeds-based City Invoice Finance. It secures the jobs of the 50 people who work at Britannia Quarries and Phil Hutchins says they will be investing in more machinery and recruiting more people.

The name of the new company running the quarry is Woodkirk Stone Sales Ltd, who have taken over the assets of the previous company and the 14 years remaining on the lease of the quarry.

Phil says that because the dimensional stone industry is still fragmented it has more purchasing opportunities than are available with aggregates - and he intends to take advantage of some of those opportunities, he says

However, he is also interested in developing the aggregates business at Britannia Quarries, which is centrally located in the West Yorkshire conurbation. "There\'s a good, developable aggregates business here at Woodkirk," he says.

Gwynn Williams, who has a number of investments in minerals reserves, some of which Phil will be involved in operating, had been in discussion with Hanson about the assets of Bath & Portland they retained following the purchase of the Portland quarries, workshop and land by Geoff Smith\'s new Stone Firms Ltd at Christmas (NSS January issue).

Phil says it was third time lucky with Woodkirk because he had first looked at it in the 1990s when he was with RMC, then again last year when he was with Ennstone.

Then, after leaving Ennstone in the autumn, he started looking for development opportunities and when Woodkirk became available he took another look at it. In spite of an administrator having been appointed, he feels the operation is essentially "a good quality business" that had sunk to low levels of productivity. "I\'m looking to get the thing back on an even keel," he says.

In fact, he feels the administrator might have helped do that because he has installed good financial disciplines. However, Phil says: "The administrator has a very short horizon, so the order book is greatly depleted."

What attracted him to Woodkirk was, he says, that some of the quarry\'s products have a market-leading position locally as well as being specified nationally and even internationally.

He adds: "The business has an excellent reputation, a committed workforce and a sound customer base. Over the next 12 months we will be investing further to develop the quarry, upgrade plant and machinery and increase marketing activity."

He hopes to sell more higher value products processed by the company, although that does not mean blocks will no longer be sold. "Because Woodkirk is such a national name we will always make block available, but there won\'t be such large volumes of it available at low prices in the future."

He says: "The key task now is letting people know we\'re in business and that Woodkirk stone is available from us."

The telephone number of the business remains the same, Tel: 01132 530464.