54 | QUARRYING Bellingham Quarries T T Hugh de Lacy Big demand for aggregate and lime MORE THAN JUST FILTERS AEROSOLS • BATTERIES • ADBLUE • TRUCKWASH • OIL • CLUTCH KIT 0800 4 FILTER | 56 Rewa Rewa Road, Whangarei | www.filterhq.co.nz FREE DELIVERYWEEKLY! A combination of increased local and central government infrastructure spending and private investment in the Far North economy has produced a big jump in business for the longstanding aggregates and lime company Bellingham Quarries of Kaitaia over recent years. The establishment of numerous avocado orchards on the Aupouri Peninsula has boosted demand for the company’s aggregate lime products, while the opening of a second concrete batching plant in Waipapa by a local haulage company has combined with hefty public infrastructure spending to nearly double Bellingham Quarries’ aggregates output. Both the NZ Transport Authority and the Far North District Council have upped their spending in the region on highway upgrades and disaster relief in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, and there’s been ongoing maintenance work on the Summit Forest roading network. Bellinghams have no fewer than eight active quarries in the Far North, and total output has doubled for some sites in the past five years. “We’re very proud of being a successful family-owned business in the Far North.” That’s a huge increase from the operation started by Ted Bellingham and sons Eric and Allan almost as a desperation measure after the kauri gum industry they had previously been involved in collapsed in the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The Bellinghams then turned to quarrying, initially down near Warkworth but later shifted by Eric Bellingham to Kaitaia where his son Donald consolidated it, then passed it on to his twin sons Brian and David, now its co-owners. Brian’s son Jarrod, the quarry manager, represents the fifth generation in the business which today is the biggest of its kind in the Far North, with a full-time staff of 18 - some of whom have been with the company for 20 years or more - operating four stationary and two mobile crushing and pulverising plants. The business would not have survived the Great Depression had not the then Minister of Public Works, Bob Semple, written out a personal cheque to keep it afloat after it hit hard rock, requiring unplanned-for drilling and blasting, on its first government contract widening the main road south of Warkworth. Semple’s generosity allowed Ted Bellingham and his sons to acquire the machinery needed to keep the business going. In 1937, at the behest of the Kaitaia Dairy Company, Eric Bellingham launched into the production of agricultural lime with quarries at Fairburn, Otangaroa and Paranui. The lime-rock is stripped, drilled, blasted and primarily crushed to a manageable size, then pulverised to less than 2mm, with a fineness range 60-80% smaller than 0.5mm. The company’s biggest market remains roading aggregates, which it supplies from Larmers Road and satellite quarries at Hobbs, Te Hapua, Tangaoke, Otangaroa and Hollands. These bluestone quarries produce the full range of roading aggregates as well as drainage metals, builders’ mix, crushed fill and grinder dust, rock spalls, sealing chip and gabion rocks. Twin joint managing directors Brian and David Bellingham, both A Grade Quarry Managers, have now been involved in the company for more than 40 years, with Jarrod set to ensure the longevity of the firm when the twins finally call it a day. “We’re very proud of being a successful family-owned business in the Far North,” Jarrod says. “Northland has always been a tough area in which to operate a business like ours, and our loyal and committed workforce has been vital in keeping us competitive. “Government and district council investment in roading, horticulture expansion and forestry roading over the past couple of decades, driven in part by a northwards population drift from Auckland, has also been a key factor in our survival, and ensures we’ll be around for a generation or two yet.”
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