An understanding of stone – GTN Interviews the Meadow View Stone

An understanding

o f s to ne

Meadow View Stone is transforming the way decorative stone is sold in garden centres thanks to its strength as a family business and indepth knowledge of the global aggregate market.

There is a rich history behind the decorative stones sold by garden retailers for customers to brighten up their pots and gardens, and it goes back as far as the Roman times. It may not seem relevant to gardeners of today but mining lead, to extract silver for coins, has shaped events leading to Meadow View Stone now being one of the driving forces in the decorative aggregate business.

Meadow View Stone is part of the much larger Long Rake Spar Co. which began life in 1867 as the Long Rake Mine famed for its bright white and sparkling calcite. Formally a waste product of lead mining, it found new markets in the gardens, driveways and gateway columns demanded during Victorian Britain. After several owners and decades, the company came up for sale and Trevor Broadhurst, who was working with his father in their nearby fluorspar

The four Long Rake Spar depots. Left: Garston, Mersyside. Centre: Prees, Shropshire. Right: Youlgreave, Derbyshire. Below: Rye, East Sussex.

business, decided to invest with his mother who became company secretary. By then mining had ceased at Long Rake but it’s above ground activities of preparing aggregate from other quarries was alive and something Trevor planned to exploit. Since then, investments in washing, bagging and specialist mineral processing has enabled the company to become a specialist in supplying a wide choice of products to the building industry and landscape sector. Following the acquisition of Meadow View Stone in 2009, it has also brought this high quality and choice of decorative aggregates to the garden retail industry too. “Physically and financially we are transforming the face of garden centres, with product that is more superior in terms of the packaging and quality,” says Jess Dabell, Brand Manager.

Today Long Rake Spar Co has four production sites in Derbyshire, Shropshire, Merseyside and East Sussex. The latter, a 20-acre dockside depot in Rye, is the most recent acquisition which has supported the company’s growth in the South East. Four dockside storage locations in Rye, Garston, Gunness and Rosyth further facilitate more than 50 shipments of loose material a year, most of which are from Europe, but also closer to home from Wales and the North East. Products are brought into these sites and stored in large bays before being processed, bagged and redistributed.

“It gives us a greater stockholding across

Jess, Trevor and Sarah proudly show off their latest batch of awards. At this year’s GLEE, Meadow View Stone displayed its Alpine Collection in large bags which received the award for the best new product in the Landscaping & Garden Building category. In 2021 it was named GCA Supplier of the Year at the GIMA Awards.

Lifestyle displays using Meadow View Stone product can significantly increase garden centre sales.

50+ shipments annually 100,000

facilities and production sites with £9 million of stock, ” he says. As it turned out this meant the company could satisfy the spike in demand during covid when other supply chains around the world were struggling.

Turnover figures for Long Rake Spar in 2021 were a healthy £38,000,000 but back in the 1990’s when interest rates topped 16%, times were tough. Trevor recalls the main business, around 80%, was aggregates for concrete and precast. Then came demand for white concrete which couldn’t be produced from aggregate found in the UK. Trevor looked to Spain for supply and his company is thought to be the first in the UK to do so. “We started to import white dolomite from Spain, and this opened our eyes to other opportunities where more premium decorative products could be utilised, ” says Trevor.

Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh also came to the rescue with the BBC television programme Ground Force. “Decorative aggregates then became fashionable, and the demand started to dramatically increase. We were working with decorative stone for use within pebble dashing and specialist concrete at the time,” says Trevor, “so it wasn’t a great leap to satisfy the increasing demand from gardeners.”

tonnes+ of loose stock

Meadow View Stone for garden centres only

the group of products in logistically strong locations and puts us in complete control of our supply chain,” explains Jess. And with more than 100,000 tonnes of loose product being handled annually, it’s thought to make Long Rake Spar Co. the largest importer of decorative aggregates in the UK. This proved to be a huge asset during the covid pandemic as Trevor shrewdly imported large amounts of stock to protect the company against unknown effects of Brexit. “We filled all our dockside storage Long Rake Spar Co. had been supplying garden centres since as early as the 1993 and Trevor recalls the early deliveries. “I remember the first garden centre we sold into was near Chatsworth and we mopped up a few other local ones with only three pallets at the time, which were delivered on a Nissen flatbed lorry. The first full articulated lorry-load we ever sold was to what is now Hayes Garden World in Ambleside as the owner had just built a new garden centre.”

It had also been supplying raw material to Meadow View Stone, which at the time was run by a father and daughter team, before it came up for sale in 2009. Once acquired, Meadow View Stone became the face for the company’s retail supply and today its products can only be found in garden centres.

Its current range of gravels, chippings, slate, pebbles, cobbles, horticultural grits and sands, also come with a printed till book detailing product prices, barcodes, product attributes and suitability guides, along with inspirational POS and a multitude of merchandising display options. Renowned for its range of exclusive premium decorative aggregates, three of which are in the top ten sellers and account for 33% of sales, Sarah Hill, Managing Director, comments: “It’s an easy win really for garden centres to come on board and get a great result from just a small selection of products. ”

One of the company’s distinct differences and an advantage over its competitors, is that premium products are sold prewashed. “If you look at our Flamingo stone, it looks like a completely different product when it’s unwashed. Washing removes the silt and fines from the product so there is no horrible residue on the stone or in the bag and the gravel is also more accurately sized as the undersized stones are emmitted in the washing process. This is the quality that garden centres want and expect, ” says Sarah.

Meadow View Stone was the first company to introduce smaller 10kg bags into garden centres with 58% of this range also being exclusive. “Our exclusive products are key to our growth, and the sales growth of our customers. Many of our products significantly contribute to increases in turnover due to their higher RRP, but also as they are selling in considerable volumes, so can contribute as much as 30% to turnover,” says Sarah.

Displaying product has proved to be key. “We have helped to reinvigorated the in-situ displays in garden centres and lots of centres have seen big increases in sales (between 25- 40%) as a result of these lifestyle driven displays,” says Jess. “But it’s hard convincing others that dedicating the space to a display will, in the long term, deliver better results than product left on pallets.”

Sarah adds: “There is growth to be had in our category, but you’ve just got to have somebody on the shop floor to manage it. We have all the tools that can drive sales and we know there is considerable growth out there. If you just get those products in, look after them and make sure they look right in store.”

The business has now switched from Foamex to a fully recyclable material for all its point-of-sale presentation. “This new medium retains the many benefits of

Trevor’s car with its roof top tent, ready for the next adventure. Foamex, such as rigidity and longer lifespan, with a smooth print face, and it’s less likely to bend or warp like Correx, ” says Jess.

A minimum of 30% of the material used in the production of aggregate bags, stretch film, and pallet hoods is recycled and any bags, film or wrap that fails in the production process is collected by a certified recycling company, broken down and re-used. The company recognises there is a taste and the demand for bags that consumers can recycle kerbside, and they are in constant conversation with their supplier, but at the moment the technology just isn’t there.

Pastures new

Trevor is a self-confessed traveller and during covid he described himself as ‘an eagle with clipped wings’. Only a small amount of aggregate is sourced from the UK, Welsh slate, Scottish pebbles, and Gold Coast gravel being a few examples so in the search for new products he happily travels to quarries across Europe in his car equipped with roof-top tent. “I’ve built relationships with family run quarries in Norway, Turkey, Portugal and Spain and these relationships are still working 30 years on,” he says.

The rising cost of fuel with new legislation, resulting in plant and mobile equipment used in the quarrying and mineral processing having to switch to white diesel, is putting pressure on the aggregate market. “I think we will be facing a difficult time next year,” says Trevor. “We have maintained our prices through this year which has been tight and has squeezed us, but we’ve done it to keep our commercial edge,” says Sarah.

Customer satisfaction rates top 90% and staff are encouraged to take pride in what they produce. Four of Trevor’s children now work in the business and there is definitely an appetite for innovation and success. Sarah adds: “I think we are now seen as market leaders in product innovation in our category. There is a definitely a hunger for us to go out and explore the wider world to find what’s out there and see if there are new products or better quality products that would complement the range.” Trevor is definitely in the long haul. “I could have sold the business many times over, but we understand stone and love what we do.” he says.