HEAVYSIDE
PLAYING THE LONG GAME
In the ever-changing aggregate industry, how does a company survive the test of time? Oliver Stanley gets the lowdown on Long Rake Spar.
L
ong Rake Spar, the UK decorative aggregate supplier, has been supplying decorative aggregates for over 150 years, having adapted to changing trends throughout, as managing director Trevor Broadhurst explains.
“The Long Rake Spar company started in Derbyshire, in Yograve, where our HQ and processing works still are today. That’s where it all began in 1867. It was a mining company back then, and it mined Derbyshire spar, the longest vein of white spar in Derbyshire. That is why it was called the Long Rake Spar company; it goes for miles,” he says. “Our decorative aggregates go back almost as far, when the then owner, Captain Percy Potter, started bagging white spar in the 1920’s, and taking it down to London. The next big change was precast concrete, used a lot during the post-war rebuilding programme. Many of the fascia of the pre-cast panel buildings used Derbyshire Spar and Skye Marble, from the Isle of Skye.”
Broadhurst bought the company in 1985, but by then, the mine, and the Welsh Spar quarry, had closed. “So, I got on the airplanes, sourcing highly coloured marbles from Norway. We used to bring a lot of materials in from Norway, Spain, and then Portugal. As the company grew, we brought decorative fabrics in, and, soon after, we had a huge pebble dash market in Scotland and South Wales as well.” Broadhurst says that the biggest change during his time in charge has been the rise of the internet, making connections far easier
largest range in the UK by far, carrying up to 10 million pound of stock,” he says. The company has recently invested in a £350K mobile bagging unit to help boost production of washed and unwashed aggregates. First unveiled at the flagship Rye harbour site, the unit can be moved and made operational within two days, and can fill bags and palletise mechanically. This increases capacity by an estimated 100,000 tonnes, taking overall stock production to up to 850,000 tonnes a year.
than ever. “It makes it a lot easier for us, and our competitors, to find and source materials. We’ve had exclusive arrangements with some of our source quarries for 30 odd years, but now we are also making new arrangements. It has made sourcing materials so much easier than the days of traveling to conduct geological surveys, leading to probably two to three new products a year.
“Now we have dock side facilities in Rye, Liverpool and up in Scotland to process it all. We bring in around about seven or 800,000 tons of decorative stone a year. We have the
“We have always evolved our practices with the times. We have a constant and moving investment programme on solar power, which we trialled on our dock side facilities, and soon we will roll it out across the group”
November 2025
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
Broadhurst says: “We have always evolved our practices with the times. We have a constant and moving investment programme on solar power, which we trialled on our dock side facilities, and soon we will roll it out across the group. We now also use electric fork trucks, and all our salespeople’s cars are electric. I’m also looking into electric small loading trucks at the moment.” “Our presence within builders merchants, has continued to grow as well,” says national sales director Shane McCormick. “We sit in buying groups across the industry. If you look at the BMF statistics, landscaping has begun to grow a little bit more since May, whereas the beginning of the year saw a decline. Our trend is the opposite of that. We’ve continued to grow this year, bucking the trend in landscaping. I think people are choosing different products to go with their landscaping. They are starting to look at using decorative aggregates as a replacement for paving, or are choosing gravel driveways, and opting for bigger border areas that will incorporate gravel as well.”
Broadhurst adds: “Our total ethos from the beginning has been ‘there’s no substitute for quality and service.’ We were the first to wash the products and put them out there, and we still do that today.
“That’s a critical change in the business that none of the competitors were doing. Many of them have caught up now, but not all of them. If you give the right service, and we’ve got great people in the business who are passionate about stone, you’ll win business from it.” BMJ
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