Aggregate Industries and Eurovia, the two shareholders of Wight Building Materials, have announced that the Isle of Wight Council have approved the Planning Application for a new asphalt plant to be built at Blackwater Quarry at St Georges.
The new plant will replace the existing asphalt plant with a new modern high performance asphalt production facility for asphalt aggregate recycling on the island. It comes as the existing plant continues to suffer from continuous breakdowns resulting in a delay in resurfacing works and repairs across the Island’s road network.
This new modern production facility represents a capital investment of over £3.5M on the island. This is a long term commitment to support a sustainable building material business on the Isle of Wight, which also supports the Isle of Wight Council’s Highways PFI and the future general infrastructure investment and reconstruction on the Isle of Wight. This investment was vital in securing the jobs at St. Georges and the various secondary businesses and trades that support aggregate, asphalt and ready mix concrete production on the Isle of Wight.
Scott Wardrop, Chief Executive of Eurovia UK said:
“Aggregate Industries and Eurovia were very pleased to now get formal approval from Isle of Wight Council that Planning Permission had been granted for both a new asphalt production facility and asphalt aggregate recycling. This allows Wight Building Materials to move forward and build a modern, low emission asphalt plant, needed by the Isle of Wight to produce high quality materials for the Island for many years to come and secures the jobs on the island.
“Now that Planning has been secured, we hope we can still get the new production facility commissioned in the second quarter of this year to enable full support of the Isle of Wight Council’s Highways PFI and gain more reliability of asphalt supplies at St. Georges. As a direct result of the Planning approval by Isle of Wight Council, Eurovia will honour our commitment made at the time of the announcement of the new Wight Building Materials joint venture company, in August 2013, to withdraw the Eurovia Planning Application for an asphalt plant at Medina Wharf (submitted in April 2012) when Wight Building Materials obtains Planning approval for St. Georges.”
As revealed this morning, the Island’s MP has welcomed the news that the proposed asphalt plant on the banks of the River Medina has been formally withdrawn.
Photo by Ian Capper
