Cemex & Forestry Commission: Specialist focus: Quarrying & Aggregates

A young fallow deer isn't the first thing you would expect to see during a tour of a sand and gravel quarry. But driving around Cemex's Bramshill site in Eversley, Hampshire, is more like taking a mini-jeep safari than looking around a major aggregates extraction operation.

The quarry is regarded as a pioneering site for land restoration thanks to a relationship with the Forestry Commission that dates back nearly 30 years.

During that time Cemex - and before that, the company it bought out in 2005, RMC - has worked alongside Commission officials to restore quarried land to a productive use for wildlife and the local community.

Driving around the 450ha site highlights how the relationship between the materials giant and the conservationists has evolved during the past three decades as new restoration techniques have been used to transform worked-out sand and gravel pits into productive woodland.

Forestry Commission western area manager Nick Hazlitt is the man charged with working alongside Cemex to ensure the land is restored in the most sustainable way. His enthusiasm for the task is infectious and his commitment extends to personally planting thousands of trees on the site.

He says: "We looked at forms of automated planting, but in the end decided the good, old-fashioned way of hand planting was the best. We can easily plant around 1,500 trees a day by hand, but on this site I've done more than 2,000 in a day."

Protecting wildlife

But the process is about a lot more than just planting row upon row of pine trees. Bramshill lies within Thames Basins Heath Special Protection Area and a Site of Specific Scientific Interest designed to protect threatened birds, including the Dartford warbler, woodlark and nightjar.

Land restoration now involves creating a habitat for these species alongside a woodland environment that the Commission can hire out to local residents for various leisure interests.

Hazlitt says: "In the old days it was just about planting a lot of trees and selling them for timber when they reached maturity. But that policy has now changed and it is not just about commercial timber - the buzz phrase now is 'social delivery', so we create areas for exercise and recreation, as well as land that offers biodiversity."

At Bramshill, the attractive mix of woodland and open spaces has made it a popular place for local horse riders, who pay £55 a year to the Commission to ride in the area. The Commission also rakes in fees from the organisers of the South of England Tempest Rally, who pay a premium to hold a stage of the rally in the woods.

It is obvious what is in the relationship for the Forestry Commission - but why is Cemex using such advanced techniques on this site and why has it been working with conservationists since long before sustainability became a corporate buzzword?

Land ownership

The answer lies in the complicated land ownership of the Bramshill site. The Commission does not own the freehold of the land - it is just a long leaseholder on the site. The freeholders are private landowners, including the wealthy Calthorpe Estate, which has granted a 199-year lease to the Commission.

Cemex estates regional manager Derek Wiseman says: "The Forestry Commission doesn't have the rights to the minerals because they lie with the freeholder, but it became imperative for us to have a good relationship with the Commission so we could work together and search for the best outcomes for restoring the land."

The quarry team decided to work with the Commission and took on board former Forestry Commission scientist David Fourt to act as an adviser and mediator between the conservationists' needs for land restoration and the company's need for economic solutions.

Bramshill may have been ahead of its time when it came to land restoration but the whole industry is now placing sustainability at the top of its agenda.

Wiseman says: "I was with RMC more years than I care to remember, so I have seen how the sustainability issue has shot up the agenda. There have been changes since Cemex bought us because Cemex is a global company, whereas RMC was on a much smaller scale and more an amalgamation of many smaller firms.

"Sustainability and the environment is now hugely important and Cemex has put it at the top of its list of priorities globally."

The global policy makers at Cemex could learn a thing or two at Bramshill, which demonstrates how a good working relationship between a conservationist and quarry manager can deliver results for both sides.

Wiseman says: "It's our ambition to hand back land that is at least as productive as before we touched it." And that is being borne out at Bramshill, where trees are now maturing faster on the reclaimed land than virgin soil.

Sorting and washing the sand and gravel produces around 15% waste, which is stored in lagoons before being dried out once a year, then used to refill extraction pits ready for tree planting.

The extracted pits are not too deep because minerals are found up to no more than 3m below the surface in the area. The earth is laid in a "ridge and furrow" system to improve drainage, and heavy agricultural machinery is used to aerate the soil to prevent problems with compaction.

Hazlitt says: "Compaction and poor drainage are the twin evils of tree growth, so we have adapted these techniques to combat them and now we have discovered that trees are growing better here in the reclaimed land."

The whole system creates a virtuous circle from extraction to remediation. Wiseman says: "We won't touch virgin land until trees on there have matured if possible because the Commission will want compensation for them.

"They cut down mature trees, then we de-root the area before we send in the heavy guns to extract the minerals up to three metres deep. We process the sand and gravel then use the waste for reclaimed land.

"We provide the Commission with ridge and furrow land to plant trees in and we can probably remediate up to 20ha a year like that."

Remediation and planning

More effort is now put into remediation and securing planning (see box) than the basic techniques of minerals extraction. "The whole business has evolved and getting the minerals out of the ground is the comparatively easy part, so more effort goes into restoration than extraction nowadays," says Wiseman.

Those efforts are certainly paying off at Bramshill, where a 30-year relationship has resulted in industry-leading standards.

Hazlitt says: "It really works here as a partnership and this model could easily be adapted across the country as an example of how restoration benefits the environment, the local community and the company itself."