Overview
Park Quarry
About Park Quarry
Park Quarry produces a beautiful, distinctive pink granite which is used widely across the local area in paths, sea defences, roadstone, and in some older buildings.
The operation at Park is quite simple and is not visible to most local people. The granite is blasted from the quarry face at three different levels, before being crushed into stone of differing sizes at the bottom of the quarry using mobile equipment that can be moved around depending upon the area being worked.
The stone is then loaded onto lorries using a wheeled shovel, before being transported onward to customers. Vehicles enter and leave the quarry using the A939, with around 28 vehicles accessing the site each day to collect and deliver materials.
The remaining stone reserve within Park Quarry equates to around four years’ production, based on its current planning permission.
Location
Park Quarry is located near to Inverness, 3km south-west of Auldearn and 3.3km south of Nairn.
It lies to the south of Park Farm, on the north-east side of the A939 road linking Nairn to Grantown-on-Spey. The surrounding landscape is predominantly farmland associated with Park Farm to the north and west, with large coniferous plantations to the south and east. The Highland Council’s works depot and recycling centre lie to the south of the site.
Our History
Historical documents and maps indicate that there has been a small-scale quarry at Park since the turn of 20th century. The site was possibly established to supply stone for local building construction.
In 1946, the Nairn Quarry and Brick Company was formed, using the site at Park to extract clay for brickmaking and granite for dimension stone and aggregates. In 1973, the site was sold to George McWilliam Contractors, registered in Muir of Ord, before they in turn sold it in 1985 to Wimpey Asphalt Limited, which became part of Tarmac in 1996.
Tarmac Caledonian
Tarmac Caledonian Limited is part of Tarmac, the UK’s leading sustainable building materials and construction solutions business.
Tarmac Caledonian operates across the Highland and Moray Councils areas, from Inverness in the West to Keith in the East. We produce and supply a range of essential building materials to construction projects in the region, including crushed rock, sand and gravel, ready mixed concrete, concrete blocks and decorative aggregates. Tarmac also delivers cement made at the Dunbar cement works by rail into the centre of Inverness.
We directly employ 35 people from the local area, and support a significant number of local jobs in the wider community through our use of local contractors, drivers, and suppliers.
Meet the team
Tarmac is a national business with strong roots across the devolved regions. Tarmac Caledonian is proud to employ local people and work with local contractors, haulage firms and suppliers. All the Tarmac Caledonian team live locally.
We are not separate from the community; we are part of it, which is why we understand the importance of being a good neighbour and working with local stakeholders to seek their input into our proposals for the site.
About Tarmac
Tarmac, a CRH company, is the UK's leading sustainable building materials and construction solutions business.
With 150 years of experience and heritage to our name, we're a national network of local businesses, combining the knowledge and expertise of two of the construction industry's most iconic brands: Tarmac, pioneers and inventors of the modern road, and Blue Circle, the company that patented Portland Cement.
We employ around 7,000 people across a network of more than 400 sites across the UK
Tarmac is part of CRH, the world's leading building materials business
Health and safety
Our ambition is to realise continuous improvement for all our employees and contractors
This approach to improving safety extends across our supply chain and to every aspect of our business - from the way we manage sites and the way train and equip our employees and contractors - to the safety features we install in our vehicles to protect road users.
We're proud to work with experts in the field of Health and Safety, such as the British Safety Council and The Health and Safety Executive and are also one of the founding partners of a mental health programme for people working in the construction sector called Mates in Mind.
We also have a brand new National Skills and Safety Park - 'The Park' - that is home to operational onboarding, professional operational training, assessments and health and safety learning, demonstrating our commitment to building the right safety culture as well as creating an enhanced experience for employees.