North Central Quarry

Over our 40 years in the quarry industry, including multiple site development and rehabilitation projects, we have gained valuable firsthand experience and an appreciation for the importance and benefits of a well planned and developed site, which accommodates both practical and aesthetic ideals. This quarry has been designed to have minimal impact on the area’s visual aesthetics. This is achieved by utilising the contours of the land, planting vegetation to create natural screens, and constructing buildings, including the office and crushing plant, below the current ground level.

To support safe and direct road access to and from the site by heavy vehicles, and with consideration of other road users, we are investing in a purpose-built, sealed and signalised access road from the quarry directly onto the Northern Highway. This eliminates the use of council-maintained roads and knowing from experience that over 85% of truck movements conclude before 2pm, we are aiming to avoid significantly contributing to the PM peak.

The process of quarrying involves excavating rock from the ground and, while blasting is crucial to this process, it is relatively infrequent and highly regulated. We expect to be blasting approximately twice per month (or roughly 16-29 blasts per year), done by our highly skilled and licensed technicians in a controlled manner that lasts only a few seconds. The wide nomination of blasting times gives us the flexibility to ensure we can respond safely to weather, explosives supply chain and onsite conditions.

Managing noise and dust impacts is an essential skill of a professional quarry operator, with a range of tried and tested techniques being implemented, the most effective being designed into the quarry considering the prevailing environmental conditions. This included where possible locating emission sources below the existing ground level, incorporating land and vegetation buffers, and designing road contours and surfaces to ensure low site speeds.

Once we are operational, we have a suite of additional techniques and monitoring to ensure we are managing dust and noise impacts to a contextually suitable level.

Quarrying is an essential primary industry which creates primary, secondary and tertiary employment opportunities for many hundreds of customer and supplier businesses throughout Victoria, in addition to our on-site teams. Through the every day running of our sites, its our company culture to look local first bringing new activity and opportunities.

Direct on-site employment, although not a large number, will continue our investment in training and supporting young people to develop long-term skills, future opportunities and purpose in life. We acknowledge our application referenced “19 FTE” jobs, however please appreciate that our sites are much more engaging than an analytical number used to model car park numbers.

North Central Quarry, like all quarries, is a temporary land use after which our community can implement innovative development. It is our legal requirement to ensure the site is returned to the landowner in a safe, stable and sustainable landform, and we have committed in our Work Plan how this will happen.

Our progressive rehabilitation will commence on day one, with the objective of providing a site which allows for a wide range of future uses as part of the Beveridge North West PSP; but categorically not as a ‘tip’. Our current concept is a combination of residential and park lands, however this will be refined together with the landowner as the site gets closer to its end of life.

Innovative planning and use of old quarries is something Victorians are really good at. Examples include Ferntree Gully Quarry Reserve, Highpoint Shopping Centre, the New Epping development, Wilson Botanic Park and Coburg Lake Reserve to name a few.