Getting to know us – our sites

We have eight operational sites across the business and each site differs depending on their focus. In our ‘Getting to Know Us’ posts, we have already introduced our quarries, the waste management side to the business and our recycling operations, therefore this article will focus on the production sites, specifically our largest operations at Caird Avenue, New Milton. Our concrete, builders merchants and sporting and horticultural business areas are still to come.

Our Production Sites:

Once we have extracted the minerals, we then need to turn our sands and gravels into much needed construction and landscaping products used to build our houses and support the growing infrastructure needed across the UK.

Commonly a quarry is where the production is carried out, on a machine called a wash plant. Two of our quarries contain wash plants, Hurn in Christchurch and Masters in Wareham. However, our largest site at Carid Avenue in New Milton is home to the largest wash plant and is the main base of our productions.

Caird Avenue, New Milton

Picture of Caird Ave from the 1940s

Caird Avenue was purchased in 1940 as a gravel extraction site for these much needed aggregates. It functioned as a quarry up until the late 60s when we then started extraction at our Pennington site.

The Caird Avenue site no longer a quarry, now produces primary and recycled aggregates from a new wash plant commissioned in May 2019. The plant and mobile screener that is used to feed the recycled material, are fully electric. The plant also recycles the water it uses to wash the aggregates and uses a pond friendly flocculant to clean the water.

Caird Avenue is also home to: a BSI accredited concrete plant, our bagging operations, the fleet and transport hub, skips and ROROs, and one of our builder’s merchants.

You can collect sands, decorative and construction aggregates, and soils, loose or bagged. You can collect ready mixed concrete and screed. Tip Recyclable/Non Recyclable inert waste and pick up a full range of building materials from plasterboard, timber and tools to curbs, heavy build materials and patio slabs.

Improvements

The Caird Avenue site is currently going through a lot of change. Improvements to site drainage, new services, refurbishment to the existing lorry park, a new hard standing access road, and an improved builder’s merchant with internal warehouse, new hard standing yard and improved customer parking with a separate entrance, are all in progress and due to be finished late summer 2022. We would like to thank all of our customers for their continued support whilst we have changed access points and moved stocked around.

Improvement works in progress 2022

Holbury, Hurn and Elliott Road, Bournemouth

Along with Caird Avenue, our Hurn quarry has a depot where you can purchase building materials, as well as our two smaller sites in Holbury and Elliott Road, Bournemouth. The Holbury and Elliott Road sites can accept tipping of all waste types and they have a great stock of the most used construction and decorative aggregates available for loose collection.

Our Masters quarry in Wareham also has a small depot but provides specific materials due to the type of specialised refined sands we extract there.