BMQ celebrates 10th anniversary
On May 1st 2015 we’re celebrating Black Mountain Quarries’ 10th anniversary. That feels like a good time for sharing some of our favourite memories.
We’ve come a long way. In the early ’00s, after building his own house at Points and opening the Tybubach Quarry on the edge of his father’s farm, Adrian Phillips began his new venture single-handedly, sitting on a digger and hauling up stone. He cropped it with the help of his Dad, they would load it on to trailers, and Adrian would then deliver it for local building and restoration work.
Ten years on and we have 15 of us at head office, four quarries in Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Cornwall, and we’ve enjoyed myriad challenges.
Sometimes the orders have been huge and international. For instance, we’ve delivered 20 shipping containers – over 400 tonnes – of Callow Red Sandstone for a commercial project in Canada. And sometimes they are small and local – we were delighted to provide boulders to Wolf Watch UK, to make the wolves a new den.
We’ve hauled up and delivered a mammoth piece of raw granite to the Eden Project, from which they made their famous acorn. And we’ve precision-cut over 1200m2 of the same granite to provide rainscreen cladding panels for the new Cornwall Council building in Bodmin.
Often our work is focussed on supporting the historic integrity of buildings. In 2012 we won the National Federation of Roofing award in the Heritage Category, for providing the natural stone roofing tiles from our sandstone quarry in Llandraw for the Crewe Municipal Building.
Other times it’s about contemporary sustainability in terms of community, traditional skills and the environment, as per the paving we supplied for the Tregunnel new town in the Duchy of Cornwall.
We’ve supplied Callow red sandstone building stone for several housing estates in the South West including Dawlish, Paignton, Crediton. And we’ve supplied bespoke cut stone for numerous grand private residences.
Whatever the project, our ultimate satisfaction comes from supplying the very best quality materials at affordable prices, with the highest possible standards of service. We believe that’s responsible for and reflected in our growth. We hope that you’ll do business with us to see for yourself why, ten years down the line, feel like we have something to celebrate.