Facts and figures about the mineral products industry

The big challenge with minerals is mentally to track them through to their end-uses. Those who see a quarry as an undesirable hole in the ground miss the point because they fail to see the role it plays in their everyday lives.

For example, in a typical year, the UK’s quarry network supports:

• the building of 130,000 new homes
• £8.0 billion on school and university improvements
• a £4.5 billion hospital building programme
• maintenance of our 230,000-mile road and 10,000-mile rail networks
• over £2 billion programme of improvements to water services

If you accept that we all effectively “demand” minerals, it is interesting to note that each of us effectively “consumes” nearly four tonnes of aggregates every year. That means that a family of four needs a lorry load of aggregates each year. Likewise, a typical house needs 18 tonnes of cement to make the concrete needed for foundations, floors, concrete blocks, lintels and more. Follow this link to our fact file.

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