Customer and industry engagement

Two stakeholder engagement workshops involving customers and trade associations were held during the year. The first featured a presentation and discussion on the circular economy and the important part that the construction materials industry can play by embracing the concept. The event also included a site visit to Bulls Lodge quarry and asphalt plant near Chelmsford in Essex where the focus was on our work to improve the level of recycled road planings which can be added to new asphalt mixes. In collaboration with asphalt contractors Eurovia we have established a dedicated facility for receiving and processing asphalt planings from road projects for use in our adjoining asphalt production plant, demonstrating the circular economy in action.

The second workshop was held at St Ives in Cambridgeshire. A business update from Hanson UK CEO Daniel Cooper was followed by a presentation on the findings of a materiality review of the HeidelbergCement Group sustainability report, which was carried out to take the report to GRI G4 status. A similar review of the UK report was carried out and concluded that although it covered all the key areas, some additional topics could be added, particularly under the economic and social pillars. This discussion has helped to shape our 2017 report and will be repeated.

The workshop was followed by a tour of Needingworth quarry where we are creating Europe’s biggest man-made reed bed from restored sand and gravel workings in partnership with the RSPB.

In addition to the stakeholder workshops, we have been working closely with the Mineral Products Association to develop a sector-wide template for Building Information Modelling (BIM) which we plan to develop further.