In 1996 Coleman & Company bought Meriden Quarry, a site of some 26 Acres. We completed the purchase within 28 days of reaching an Agreement on price with the Vendor. We bought the site, a poorly fenced, dangerous flooded quarry, without any planning permission. It was our plan to reclaim the site, gradually filling the void with suitable materials to meet the end use.

Coleman & Company’s quarry producing a high quality product from recycled materials

Our Planning Application was granted, in that application we had incorporated a plan to recycle and reclaim materials arising from our own activities. We did not want a licence to create a “tip” to reap a short term return on our investment; we were looking positively towards the long term sustainable future for the company. We set about making the site safe and secure, reducing the water levels to see what lay beneath, to create a good working area, hard standing and haul roads. To our delight we discovered and recovered abandoned sands and gravels. In accord with our Planning Consent we set up a crushing and recycling plant to manufacture and recover D.O.T. Specification materials from the materials arising from our demolition and excavation works.

We imported materials from contracts that we had with Laing for additional Exhibition Halls at the N.E.C., Birmingham, also with Bovis at Touchwood Shopping Centre, Solihull. Very soon, the Environment Agency informed us that we were operating illegally by “depositing waste on land not licensed to receive such materials”. We argued our case, on TWO occasions we were “Interviewed under Caution” over the “Definition of Waste” and were delighted to have been successful in proving our case. Later the E.A. used our Meriden site as an “exemplar site” an example for others to follow.

Some of the high quality gravel we produce from recycled materials.

The policy of owning good reliable plant and equipment continued, we added the first Cat 350 High Reach, we later designed and added a 4m boom extension to this machine, also added to the fleet were Cat 330 demolition specification machines.

To learn more about our recycling and materials recovery operations please click here.