About the Industry

Post-College.

Without quarrying, life as we know it could not exist. The products from quarrying give us our homes, shops, offices, hospitals and roads. A typical family creates a need for about a lorry-load of stone every year.

Take your house as an example. Modern houses are built almost entirely from materials made from rocks:

The bricks and roof tiles are made from clay
The mortar that bonds the bricks is made from sand, lime and cement
The foundations and blocks are made of concrete, a mixture of cement, aggregates and water
The plaster is made from gypsum
The glass in the windows is made using sand

All of these materials are provided through quarrying, so it’s obvious that a quarry is a lot more than just a hole in the ground! And the industry is behind some more unlikely products we all use too…

Ground chalk is added to bread to give us calcium
Salt is added to our food during cooking
Pills consist of a small quantity of drug absorbed onto a "carrier" such as white clay
The abrasive in your toothpaste comes from limestone
Clay is used in face creams

Life would certainly be very different without all of these things we take for granted. It takes a hi-tech and multi-billion pound industry to make sure we continue to enjoy them.

Whoever you are and whatever you enjoy doing, you’ll find that there’s a job for you in the quarrying industry. Be part of an exciting industry that affects all our lives all the time. The career opportunities are endless and range from environmental management, to engineering, and marketing. Find out about what’s on offer in our job roles section or read case studies about people like you that have succeeded in quarrying.

What’s on offer in the sector?

The quarrying and extractives sector is surprisingly broad, and there are opportunities in a number of areas including:

Quarrying - varied roles carrying the responsibility of managing the production of rock and sand and gravel.
Road Contracting - vital jobs in laying the nation’s roads to the highest technical standards.
Marine - sand and gravel from the seabed are a vital source of materials to UK construction and there are a number of jobs on offer.
Business Support - all the above are multi-million pound industries that require high quality business support to keep them running.
Environment and Planning - the industry places great emphasis on sustainable development, so planning new operations, restoring the land and careful environment management are important roles.

Find out more about what’s on offer in our job roles section.