Unveiled by the Rt Honourable Lord Deben, a new Green Aggregates plant at Thurrock in Essex is a UK first in repurposing materials taken from the nation’s highways. Using advanced reprocessing systems, Green Aggregates will deliver consistent sustainable high-quality aggregates for asphalt production, reducing the reliance on quarried materials and dramatically improving the circular economy.
Designed by a specialist team within Eurovia, drawing on international knowledge and best practices, the multi-million pound facility combines advanced processing technology and rigorous quality control. By using selected materials taken during the initial milling process when resurfacing a highway, the Green Aggregates processes will result in repurposed materials for asphalt manufacture while maintaining performance, sustainability, and long-term value for road infrastructure, equivalent to virgin sourced materials.
Lord Deben (pictured, left, with Scott Wardrop, chief exec of UK division of VINCI Construction) said,
“Green Aggregates is not just a financial investment by Eurovia, the new facility represents a commitment to making our roads from as sustainable a material as current technology permits. The goal of manufacturing the UK’s road surfaces from materials taken from the highway and creating aggregate of the best possible quality raises the bar not just for the UK’s road surfacing sector. It asks questions of the standards to which we wish our manufacturing processes to adhere. I commend Eurovia for their ambition and look forward to seeing the results and the progress towards establishing further production plans like this one.”
Eurovia managing director, Paul Goosey said,
“We believe Green Aggregates will revolutionise the production of asphalt. The higher levels of repurposed content will raise standards across the industry, and we are keen to talk to industry colleagues and Government about how this can be adopted across the UK. By repurposing and reusing of the asphalt layers, or road planings and applying new production systems we will improve performance, adopt a circular approach, reduce energy with under cover stored materials, minimise logistic movements, and significantly decrease demand for quarried aggregates, and reducing imported bitumen.”
(Pictures: Green Aggregates/VINCI/Eurovia)
