About Ravelrig
Ravelrig Quarry
Location
Ravelrig quarry is located between the villages of Kirknewton and Balerno within the City of Edinburgh Boundary. The A70 road runs to the South of the Quarry and the A71 to the North. The quarry is 3 miles from the City Bypass and 8 miles from the city centre. Vehicle access the site from the A71 via Haggs Farm Road and Long Dalmahoy Road.
What does the quarry do?
Ravelrig quarries a rock called olivine dolerite, a hard igneous rock, known as whinstone. It is used as a high quality “aggregate” in road building and surfacing, ready mix concrete and building foundations across Edinburgh and the Lothians.
How is stone quarried at Ravelrig?
Rock is removed from the ground using a carefully designed pattern of drilling and explosives, known as blasting. The design aims to use the minimum amount of energy to remove the desired section of rock in a highly controlled way. Blasting usually takes place about once per month at the site.
The broken rock is then lifted using an excavator and transported in dump trucks to the processing plant. There it goes through a cycle of crushing and screening to create the various grades and sizes of rock required for construction materials. The plant at Ravelrig was built in 1986 with later additions in 2003. The process is fully electrified and does not involve any washing, additional chemicals, or treatments. A small quantity of water is used for dust suppression.
The finished products are stored in large containers called hoppers or in stockpiles. Lorries arriving at the quarry are weighed in at the weighbridge near the quarry entrance. From there they are loaded from the hoppers or stockpiles and are weighed out using the same weighbridge near the entrance. The existing planning consent restricts quarry operations, including sales, to 07.00 to 19.00 hours Mondays to Fridays and 07.00 to 12.00 hours on Saturdays. In practice most loads leave the quarry by 16:00 during the week.
About Tarmac
Tarmac is the UK’s leading supplier of construction materials. With over 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 provide vital building materials such as stone, sand, gravel, concrete, asphalt, and mortar that enable the construction and maintenance of homes, roads and infrastructure which play a vital part of our everyday lives.
We employ around 6,000 people across a network of more than 400 sites in the UK. As a large landholder and custodian of natural resources, we are committed to managing the balance between industry, the natural environment, and the communities we work in by ensuring our work prioritises responsible stewardship, enhances wildlife, supports local communities, and boosts the local and national economy.
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.
