14 June 2011
Strangford MP, Jim Shannon paid a visit to a high profile City Centre resurfacing project to see how the Streets of London are being paved with Ballystockart stone.
Mr Shannon visited the site at Hyde Park Corner recently where Whitemountain’s Ballystockart aggregate was incorporated in the surface course of the road. The source of the aggregate, Ballystockart Quarry, near Comber is in Mr Shannon’s constituency and is exported to a number of major asphalt manufacturers in Great Britain, particularly South East England.
The work at Hyde Park Corner was being carried out by Eurovia Infrastructure Ltd through a programme of night-time working for their Client, Transport for London. The aggregates had been shipped from Whitemountain’s dedicated export facility at Belfast Port to Eurovia’s Dagenham depot on the Thames.
The resurfacing works were at one of central London’s busiest and high profile intersections, carried out at night to minimise both vehicular and pedestrian traffic disruption.
Ballystockart is an approved source of high specification aggregates for use in the manufacture of Eurovia’s U-LM, a Thin Surfacing System for Roads which has high durability and low noise properties.
The mix design has a high PSV (Polished Stone Value) requirement of +68, which Ballystockart is one of only a small number of sources in the British Isles.
Mr Shannon, who is his party’s Transport Spokesman in Westminster, had visited both the quarry and port facilities a few months ago to see the aggregate production and shipping operations and was delighted to see the material in use only a stone’s throw from Parliament.
“They used to say that the streets of London are paved with gold but I am delighted to see that they are actually being paved with Ballystockart stone from my own constituency” said Mr Shannon during his late night visit to the site.
He went on to say, “It is great to see Whitemountain Quarries Ltd, a local Company, building strong relationships and a reputation for quality products with major Companies in the Highway Construction Sector”