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Quarry open day

 

Saturday 14 June 2008 was Huntsmans 3rd and most successful Open Day. Held in conjunction with the Cotswold Conservation Board there were demonstrations of drystone walling, cotswold slate making, stone masonry and building stone production. This was augmented by Quarry tours, dump truck rides and excavator drives which were a major attraction.

The ever popular Geology Trust Roadshow was on hand with their extensive "hands on" displays along with interactive exhibits of our ecology and biodiversity work.

Visitor numbers were approximately 500 and £457 was raised for the charity "Friends of the Cotswold"

The winners of the competitions were:-

 

Grass Snake Competition             Jordan Taber. Cold Aston

 

Guess the weight of Stone            Oliver Minns, Cold Aston

                                                        Jordan Harding     Bourton on the Water

 

New Investment

Huntsmans Quarries Ltd have invested over £500,000 in new plant and machinery.

A new Komatsu PC 600 excavator replaces the 4 year old machine used for primary breaking and loading.

Additionally three new lorries have been purchased.  An 11 tonne DAF and 22 tonne Volvo tipper and a 14 tonne specialist DAF with crane and tipper body.  The latter pictured with enable Huntsmans to better serve the local market with bagged and palletised products.  Marring the crane upto a tipper body is quite unique but will ensure greater operational flexibility.

 

 

 

 

North Cotswold Disabled Club

The North Cotswold Disabled Club recently took delivery of a new disabled vehicle.

Huntsmans have sponsored the Club for many years by providing the fuel for the previous bus and we are very pleased to continue this support with the new vehicle.

Pictured is Club volunteer driver David Martell.

 

Moreton Show

Once again Huntsmans had an excellent day at Moreton Show.  The Dry Stone Walling Association demonstrated their superb skills with Huntsmans' products.  Steve Clifford of Huntsmans gave regular demonstrations of cropping techniques for natural building stone.

Also on display was our range of natural and reconstituted walling & slate.

 

 

Cotswold School

In July some pupils from the Cotswold School, Bourton on the Water learnt the art of dry stone walling as part of their activities week.

 

 

Dale Street

from the Cotswold school enjoys a weeks work experience in the office putting together charts and graphs to show each vehicle's fuel consumption.

His time with us also included a tour of the quarry with the chairman, Mr. Milner and a day at the weighbridge.

Huntsmans Open Day

On the 16th of June Huntsmans held their second open day with tremendous support from the Cotswold Conservation Board and their wardens. Also present on the day was the fantastic rock & fossil roadshow provided and supported by the Gloucester Geology Trust.

The weather luckily held off and over 300 visitors took guided tours by Huntsmans staff round the quarry on buses provided by Pulhams of Bourton- on-the-Water.

Demonstrations of drystone walling were provided by the Drystone Walling Association and Huntsmans staff demonstrated the art of stone cropping for building stone and natural Cotswold slate dressing as well as production of the reconstituted slate. In addition visitors were able to take a trip in one of the quarry's large Volvo A25 dump trucks.

Some £200 in donations was raised in support of The Friends of the Cotswolds Charity.

Michael Oliver

 

from Chipping Campden School enjoys a weeks work experience training in and producing hand dressed stone for various building projects in the local area. 

His time with us also included a spell outside with one of our customers learning how to construct a drystone wall.

 

New Acquisition

Huntsmans are pleased to announce the acquisition of the Atlas Walling and Roofing Products. Brett Landscaping Ltd closed their factories at Lechlade and Chipping Campden and Huntsmans jumped at the chance to secure the walling and roofing products and relocate them to our quarry at Naunton.

The products have a similar history to Huntsmans dating back to 1928. Moving their production to Naunton enables us to maintain another supply of what has now become a traditional Cotswold based product  using local materials.

 

School Visit

On three separate days throughout October, Huntsmans welcomed some 80 children from the Guillemont Junior School in Farnborough, Hampshire. The children were on week long field trips studying the 'built environment', staying at Stow on the Wold.

Managing Director, David Glenn and Commerical Director, Nick Hanks provided guided tours of the quarry and recycling operations, and demonstrated some of the uses that stone and aggregate play in our everyday lives. Though the highlight of the trips appeared to be taking the mini buses through the wheel wash and the dinosaur footprints on display at our Site of Special Scientific Interest display area (which is also open to the public).

 

Tourists

 

Huntsmans Quarries Ltd opened their doors to the public for an open day on Friday 2 June to coincide with the opening of a geological Area of Special Scientific Interest created by the Company. It also marked the launch of the Cotswold Hills Geopark. This is an organisation supported by The Gloucester Geoconservation Trust, The Cotswold AONB, English Nature and Huntsmans Quarries. It covers an area from Stroud in the south to Chipping Campden in the north and aims to highlight the part geology plays in forging our landscape and way of life. It will be an educational as well as a tourist attraction. More

 

Moreton in Marsh Show

The team enjoyed an excellent if wet day at the Moreton in Marsh Agricultural Show on Saturday 2 September. In addition to our normal displays of products we had an excellent live demonstration of dry stone walling using Huntsmans stone, by the Drystone Walling Association. Our thanks go to Andy Deller, Janet Gaskell and Kate Wright for joining us and we look forward to teaming up with them again next year.

We also had a demonstration cavity wall construction by Steve Allen of Acorn Builders of Chipping Norton tel 01608 641553. This showed the construction of a standard cavity wall using Huntsmans natural cropped building stone and the soon to be manufactured Huntsmans Atlas Stone Walling.

 

Planning

Huntsmans received unaminous support at Gloucestershire County Planning Committee for the proposed increase in depth of working. This increases our consented reserves by 2.1 million tonnes of high quality aggregate and building stone predominantly for supplies to the North Cotswolds. This secures the operations for Huntsmans and our 50 employees for in excess of 25 years.