Devon sand & gravel sales in 2023: lowest on record – down 29% on previous year

Oh dear. Pity poor Holcim UK (formerly Aggregate Industries). 

In the very same year the company finally won permission to quarry Straitgate Farm after a near decade-long struggle, the bottom fell out of Devon’s aggregates market, and sales of sand and gravel slumped by an eye-watering 29% – down from 521,000 tonnes to just 370,000 tonnes. 

What terrible timing. 

The recently published South West Aggregates Working Party Annual Report 2023 says: 

Devon’s sales of sand and gravel have remained fairly consistently around the half million tonne mark since 2011. Prior to 2023, 2020 had seen the lowest figure of the decade with sales of 0.437mt (possibly attributable to the effects of the Covid pandemic) whilst 2021 saw a rise back up to 2018 levels, with a sales figure of 0.54mt. 2022 sales remained on a similar level with a sales figure of 0.52mt but 2023 witnessed a fairly dramatic drop down to 0.37mt taking over from 2020 as the lowest figure of the decade by a reasonable margin. 

However, the trend has been clear for a long time.

 

No wonder the company said it would need to mothball Straitgate Farm immediately following implementation of the planning permission. 

Why such a dramatic fall in the county’s sand and gravel sales? The same report says: 

2.23 Devon has suggested that the decrease in sales this year is a result of the economic uncertainty brought about by market volatility, worldwide events and the pandemic, which the UK economy is still recovering from. 

But that hardly explains a 29% slump, when sales of recycled aggregates, crushed rock, and secondary aggregates in the county fell by a far more modest 9%, 5%, and 2% respectively in the same period. 

The 29% fall is noticeably more than in the South West as a whole, where sales fell by 18%:

In 2023, aggregate sales of land won sand and gravel in the region totalled 2.26mt, a decrease from 2022’s sales figure of 2.75mt

The contrast is even starker nationally. The MPA’s 11th Annual Mineral Planning Survey Report says that in 2023 across the country, “land-won primary aggregate sales decreased by 5.3%”, with sand and gravel down 7.1%. 

So why 29%? As the largest producer of sand and gravel in the county, was part of the decline self-inflicted? Did Holcim UK drop the ball? Could its prices for instance be too high? 

And what prospect now for expensive HVO-fuelled 2.5-million-mile haulage schemes? How will the market ever tolerate that? 

Things have not improved across the country since 2023. In February this year, the MPA reported: 

...ready-mixed concrete, ubiquitous to all types of construction projects, faced a 10.8% annual decline in 2024, reaching its lowest level in over 60 years. Primary aggregates sales declined by 2.6%, with sand and gravel particularly impacted due to weak demand from the struggling ready-mixed concrete market, where it is mostly used. 

The heady days of the 80s and 90s, when sales of unsustainable primary virgin land-won sand and gravel exceeded a million tonnes a year, are fortunately long gone. Now the more sustainable alternatives of secondary and recycled aggregates are taking over. Just in the last 10 years, the trend has been only one way, as the graph below shows. In Devon, land-won sand and gravel is now out-sold by both secondary and recycled aggregates, having gone from being 39% of the mix to just 26% – a trend we previously pointed to here and here.

‘We don’t just talk the talk’ – Really?

In promoting the rebrand from Aggregate Industries, Holcim UK – with seemingly little left in the marketing pot – is proud to tell you about its sustainable billboard:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Holcim UK (@holcim_uk)

But, let’s not be too harsh – the rebrand to Holcim UK is apparently "a really clear signal of intent of our commitment to a sustainable future."

Why the name Holcim should signal such intent is anybody’s guess; Holcim – the world’s largest cement company – is one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet. 

However, the rebrand goes further, allegedly offering a chance for the company to revitalise its Place for Nature campaign – in part "to create a space for our colleagues to sit and enjoy and be part of nature whilst at work". Yes, seriously. 

Isn’t that comforting to know – as company bulldozer drivers up and down the country rip up existing wildlife habitat, like the ancient hedgerows due to be grubbed up at Straitgate? The company says: 

A strategy must be for the employees as much as the employer, and it’s vital they feel part of the overall sustainability journey. For us, that meant providing individual areas of ownership, a key element of which is creating ‘a place for nature’ across all our 200 sites nationwide.

How’s the plan going? The company’s latest sustainability report tells us: 

We developed 29 places for nature in 2023 which fell short of our target.

How hard can it be to put up a bird box or insect hotel?

Straitgate’s ‘revolutionary’ working scheme not being deployed at Penslade

Holcim UK (formerly Aggregate Industries) doesn’t intend to deploy Straitgate’s "revolutionary" working scheme at Penslade. 

For a scheme that allows more material to be recovered, isn’t that funny? How many aggregate companies would forgo another metre's depth of material given half a chance? 

For the company’s new application for Penslade – where there are few people nearby wholly reliant on private water supplies: 

4.1.3 The base of mineral extraction has been set at 1m above maximum recorded groundwater levels. 

One metre. It’s as clear and simple as that, and the Environment Agency has already said it has no objection to the application. 

Oh, what a different story it has been for Straitgate Farm, where for 12 months back in 2015 the company wouldn’t even come clean that the base of mineral extraction has been set at 0m above maximum recorded groundwater levels – or at least an imprecise model of them – and that a "revolutionary" seasonal working scheme is to be deployed: As we posted at the time: 

AI's seasonal working scheme has now been described as "revolutionary"; not by us, but by someone on the other side closely connected to all this. 

How exciting! Local people will be thrilled. Thrilled at the prospect of being part of an experiment, where their drinking water supplies are reliant on the success of this "revolutionary" scheme; a scheme that relies on groundwater levels falling over the summer months to allow AI to quarry down to the maximum water table level, rather than leaving the 1m unquarried buffer above the maximum water table typically employed to safeguard surrounding water supplies.

So, a 1m buffer is to be retained at Penslade to protect the water environment, whilst a 0m buffer is to be retained at Straitgate – where there are more than 100 people reliant on private water supplies, as well as farms and businesses. 

No, it doesn’t make any sense to us either. 

It’s a story we won’t dredge up again, although it has been covered in these posts from 2015 to 2018 for anybody at all interested: 

Clarification from the EA 

How many AI suits does it take to have a meeting with the EA? 

Finally, in writing, how AI thinks it can wrestle 1.2 million tonnes from Straitgate 

AI was asked a very simple question

No wonder AI wants to keep Straitgate’s groundwater data secret

 

Aggregate Industries rebrands as Holcim UK

Today, Companies House filings confirm that Aggregate Industries UK Limited has changed its name to Holcim UK Limited – aligning with its Swiss-based parent, which acquired the company in 2005.

EDIT 17.3.25 Holcim UK claims it is set on a "new strategic direction" which will see the business "align more closely with its Swiss-based parent company":

Holcim UK’s strategy will see the organisation target significant growth in sales and sustainability – with particular focus on decarbonisation, circularity and nature... etc etc

No doubt, we'll all be watching to see whether the walk matches the talk.

Let's at least hope there's a focus too on maintaining proper warning signs for cyclists – given there clearly wasn’t on the truck used for the publicity shots.

 

In a line reminiscent of the film Love Actually, Lee Sleight, CEO of Holcim UK, said:

Our evolution from Aggregate Industries to Holcim UK is much more than a rebrand.

Brazil mining dam disaster: Trial concludes in UK’s largest class-action lawsuit

The trial over damages from the 2015 Mariana mining dam disaster in Brazil has concluded. The dam was owned by Samarco, a joint venture between Brazilian mining firm Vale, and Anglo-Australian BHP. Previous posts on tailings dam collapses in Brazil can be found here. 

More than 600,000 Brazilians, 46 local governments and about 2,000 businesses are suing BHP over the disaster in a lawsuit worth up to £36bn. 

The lawsuit, one of the largest in English legal history, began in October and ended on Thursday with closing submissions. 

“I will produce a judgment as soon as I can,” the judge, Finola O’Farrell, said as she announced the end of the trial.

A trial to decide Australian mining giant BHP's liability for one of Brazil's worst environmental disasters concluded in London on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of victims demanding billions in compensation @CorpusculO https://t.co/VCfbzYgNw7

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 13, 2025

London trial concludes in largest ever UK group action — more than 600,000 Brazilians, 46 local governments and 2,000 businesses are suing BHP over Brazil dam disaster in lawsuit worth up to £36bn. https://t.co/IM92NOh7qZ

— Glaspell — Class Actions (@Glaspell) March 14, 2025

Aggregate Industries’ Straitgate update for February – still awaited

With just 10 months to go before Aggregate Industries’ permission to quarry Straitgate Farm expires, and with monthly monitoring of Private Water Supplies currently ceased in breach of its Unilateral Undertaking legal agreement, and with no sign of the revised site entrance plans called for last July, or even the exploratory investigations required beforehand, and with infiltration tests to verify the surface water management plan still waiting to be done, and the four boreholes planned for last summer still to be drilled, and a multitude of schemes to meet pre-commencement conditions still to be agreed with Devon County Council, and with an application to quarry 3.9 million tonnes of sand and gravel at Penslade next to Hillhead now validated by Devon County Council, has the company lost interest in Straitgate? 

It is certainly staying very quiet. 

Aggregate Industries had agreed to provide monthly updates of its progress, in relation to implementing its permission to quarry the site. 

Last month, the company anticipated being in a position to provide an update at the end of February, having reported nothing new since the beginning of last September. 

No update has been forthcoming – despite a reminder sent to Aggregate Industries a week ago. 

Devon County Council has also been kept in the dark. 

Any update provided by the company will be posted here, as and when received.

Glendinning wash plant ‘reduces reliance on imported sands’

In 2021, a planning application by Glendinning to extend Linhay Hill Quarry, a limestone quarry near Ashburton adjacent to the A38 in the Dartmoor National Park in Devon, was approved by the Dartmoor National Park Authority – as we posted about here. 

Last week, it was reported that the site’s main wash plant has been upgraded: 

Creating various limestone aggregates from 6mm to 20mm, the site also produces 0-4mm washed, crushed aggregate fines (black concrete sand). This black sand is mixed with traditional china clay sand, before being used in ready-mixed concrete at the firm’s plants within the quarry and in nearby Plymouth and in Exeter. 

By being able to use a larger percentage of the black sand within the ready-mixed concrete plant, Glendinning have been able to reduce their reliance on imported sands, lowering their carbon footprint and reducing truck transport on local roads.

Articles from the February 2025 issue Quarry Management are now available to view on Agg-Net - https://t.co/9ZnL5Bz2TC - Site report on new PowerX Equipment wash plant at Glendinning’s Linhay Hill Quarry; Screens & Grizzlies; Institute of Quarrying; Special reports pic.twitter.com/0G4DNhg7PX

— Agg-Net (@aggnetweb) March 6, 2025

Aggregate Industries submits planning application to extend Hillhead Quarry

Aggregate Industries has submitted a new planning application to quarry sand and gravel in Devon – despite not yet implementing its permitted plans to quarry Straitgate Farm, and despite complaining that current economic conditions mean its plans for Straitgate may need to be mothballed. 

Today, Devon County Council validated the company’s application to quarry land south west of Penslade Cross, DCC/4424/2025, an extension to its quarry at Hillhead near Uffculme, that is expected to yield 3.9 million tonnes of saleable sand and gravel over a 13-year period: 

Proposed extension of Hillhead quarry for the winning and working of sand and gravel with restoration using imported inert fill, inclusive of a new internal haul road and the retention of the existing mineral processing facilities

The land is owned by Aggregate Industries, and has the same type of material that underlies Straitgate. In total, there are thought to be some 23 million tonnes at Penslade, 8 million tonnes of which are allocated in the Devon Minerals Plan. The site sits a short distance from the company's processing plant. 

Aggregate Industries’ planning application for Penslade has been expected for some time. In 2021, the company was granted permission to drill boreholes around Penslade to monitor the watertable. At the Straitgate appeal, it became clear that the company had told Devon County Council that an application would be submitted in 2023. However, only in September 2024 did the company issue a newsletter inviting locals to a drop-in event the following month to publicise its plans.

 

In this newsletter, the company reminded us – despite having won permission to quarry Straitgate – that: 

Hillhead Quarry is the main source of sand and gravel in Devon and is Aggregate Industries’ only sand and gravel quarry in the south west.

The proposed Hillhead extension is identified as a minerals allocation in the Devon Minerals Plan as the replacement resource for the existing Hillhead sand and gravel quarry, which on current production rates has permitted reserves until c. 2028/9. We are starting the planning process for our Hillhead extension now in order to allow sufficient time to enable an orderly and planned transition of mineral working to the new extension area to take place in c.2028/9. 

Clearly any material won from Straitgate in the intervening period – which is only permitted to be processed at Hillhead – does not figure in those timescales. Earlier this year, the company won permission for another 460,000 tonnes of sand and gravel at Hillhead, which will see it through until this new application is decided. 

Ever since Aggregate Industries moved its sand and gravel processing operation to Hillhead back in 2018 – after it was forced to move its operations away from Blackhill on Woodbury Common, part of the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths in the East Devon AONB – it has made economic and environmental sense to source raw material closer to the processing plant. It made no sense to source material from Straitgate, 23 miles away. Given we have a new application for Penslade, alongside the as yet unimplemented permission for Straitgate, perhaps the penny has finally dropped. 

At the Public Inquiry deciding the fate of Straitgate – with its barely 1 million tonnes – the Planning Inspectors chose to ignore the 23 million tonnes of sand and gravel sitting at Penslade, arguing there was "a shortage of sand and gravel in Devon", and writing: 

82. Although development of the allocated site west of Penslade Cross would contribute significantly to supply, there is no immediate prospect of this coming forward, and our decision must be based on the current situation with respect to sand and gravel supply.  

137. We have already noted that there is little prospect of the allocated site at west of Penslade Cross coming forward in the near future. Therefore, any advantage that that site would have over the appeal site in terms of its proximity to Hillhead Quarry is not material to our decision.

Even Aggregate Industries chose to forget there was any gravel in the fields around Hillhead, when it was trying to win permission for Straitgate. At the time, we posted AI’s greenwash document assumes no gravel at Hillhead, not 25%, not 5%, not any!

And yet, just two years on, a planning application for Penslade has indeed come forward – as we all knew it would – which is expected to provide enough material for years to come. 

So, clearly, there is no shortage of sand and gravel in Devon, and – as we have argued for the last two decades – zero need for mineral from Straitgate Farm.

UK construction activity falls at fastest pace since 2020

UK construction PMI falls to lowest since 2020 as house-building plummets https://t.co/4oSowP6mrv pic.twitter.com/C54ZcnOAXy

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 6, 2025

MPA: ‘Road ahead remains uncertain and peppered with potholes’

The Mineral Products Association – the trade body representing Aggregate Industries et al. – has recorded an uptick in sales of construction materials in the final months of 2024, but notes: 

Despite these encouraging signals, the MPA data also underscores the severity of the construction slowdown over the past two years and the major challenges facing the £22 billion mineral products industry. For example, annual mortar sales fell by 15% in 2024, dropping below 2 million tonnes - some 28% lower than their 2022 peak of 2.7 million tonnes. 

Similarly, ready-mixed concrete, ubiquitous to all types of construction projects, faced a 10.8% annual decline in 2024, reaching its lowest level in over 60 years. Primary aggregates sales declined by 2.6%, with sand and gravel particularly impacted due to weak demand from the struggling ready-mixed concrete market, where it is mostly used. 

Aggregate Industries’ Straitgate update for January

Aggregate Industries has today provided the following update in relation to implementing its permission to quarry Straitgate Farm: 

I don't have anything to report at this time, but anticipate that I will be in a position to provide you with an update at the end of this month.

Previous monthly updates from the company can be found here.

AI’s Planning Manager overseeing Straitgate leaves the company

A new year – yet another in this long-running saga – and another person responsible for Aggregate Industries’ attempts to quarry Straitgate Farm has moved on to pastures new. 

Chris Herbert, Planning Manager South, has, we have been informed, left the company to pursue new opportunities. 

Over the last five years, Chris has been tasked with overseeing the company’s efforts to firstly win planning permission from Devon County Council, and then, when that failed, to appeal the refusal, and then, when permission was finally – and, to some, surprisingly – granted by the Planning Inspectorate, to implement the heavily-conditioned permission. 

It was Chris who provided us with monthly updates on the company’s progress in relation to implementing the permission. Today, Aggregate Industries said "we have no further update at this time."  

The company has until 5 January 2026 to implement its planning permission for Straitgate. 

Many personnel at Aggregate Industries have come and gone over the many years that we have been striving to save Straitgate. For instance, the company fielded three representatives at the Development Management Committee meeting in December 2021, when permission was originally refused. For whatever reasons, all three – the other two here and here – have now left the company. 

Could the last Aggregate Industries' person leaving the Straitgate project kindly turn out the lights?