Glensanda investment creates more jobs

Super quarry Glensanda is taking on more workers to support a new multi-million pound investment at its remote site.

 

Glensanda Quarry currently employs more than 130 staff of its own, as well as regular contractors, but has plans to increase that number to more than 175 from the start of the new year.

 

Quarry owners, Aggregate Industries UK (AIUK), says it is investing in a mobile plant for its load and haul operation and needs the extra workforce from January 1 to support it as it continues to work 24/7 from its base on the Morvern Peninsula - the sea is the only practical way of access.

 

Several of the new jobs are expected to be advertised in the future but the other posts will be filled through transfer under TUPE.

 

A TUPE transfer happens when an organisation, or part of it, is transferred from one employer to another.

 

No more details about the present-day TUPE arrangements were available from AIUK at the time of going to press.

 

In 2017 the Oban Times reported how the quarry's primary load and haul contract was handed over from its then provider Hargreaves to a Spanish company, a newly created business named Oban Earth Works Limited.

 

A spokesperson for AIUK said: 'As well as regular contractors, Aggregate Industries currently directly employs over 130 people and through transfer under TUPE will be increasing that number to over 175 from January 1.

 

'This increase in direct employees is being made to support a multi-million-pound investment in a mobile plant for our load and haul operation and we anticipate advertising for several vacant positions in the near future.'

 

Glensanda is one of the largest single quarry operations in the world, shipping granite aggregates all over the globe, with about a century's worth of reserves.

 

Foster Yeoman started the operation in 1982 before it was acquired by the Aggregate Industries group, mining the Meall na h-Easaiche mountain. To lessen the look of the impact on the coastline, the quarry is about one mile inland and cut down into the mountain.

 

AIUK says it has no plans to change working shifts for now at Glensanda but energy cost hikes and the loss of quarries being able to use rebated red diesel means it is more 'important than ever to produce as efficiently as possible'.

 

This may mean that production runs will need to target hours where the electricity unit price is lower.

 

'To produce over six million tonnes per year of crushed Granite requires around the clock activity. Whether it is production or maintenance, someone is always working through the night,' added the AIUK spokesperson.