Bury St Edmunds is the new regional base for GRS as the firm looks to grow its supply of construction aggregates made from recovered waste materials to developers across East Anglia, alongside its carbon-reducing construction solutions.
With a turnover of more than £500 million, the Warwickshire-based firm has been among the UK’s fastest growing companies in The Sunday Times Top Track 250 four times in recent years, and GRS bosses are confident of a new wave of growth, particularly in Suffolk but also Cambridgeshire, Essex and Norfolk. The annual demand for aggregates in the East of England looks set to exceed 20 million tonnes in the years ahead.
The new office on Hollow Road, Bury St Edmunds will house the GRS ‘major projects’ team alongside colleagues from the company’s aggregates and waste trading business. Also based there will be regional representatives of GRS subsidiaries including earthworks and civils contractors ISC, ground stabilisation specialists Soil Science and rail freight venture Rail Stone Solutions.
At an event to mark the official opening, GRS chief executive Jon Fisher and the regional team were joined by Karim Massaad of Suffolk Chamber of Commerce and former Premier League midfielder and professional football manager Jody Morris of the League Managers Association with whom GRS has a long-term people development partnership.
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Jon Fisher said: "There's huge potential for growth across East Anglia – probably greater than any other part of the UK – and having a base in Bury St Edmunds gives us a platform to do business in this part of the world. The opening of our new office is just the start of a multimillion-pound plan to grow in this region. We plan to open a rail freight terminal near Ipswich, marine wharves in two locations on the East Coast, and a new facility for bagging materials to supply East Anglia’s builders’ merchants."
Jody Morris, who played locally throughout his career, and took part in the official opening on behalf the League Managers Association (LMA), said: "It was a real pleasure to be invited along to open this new office for GRS! The LMA has worked with GRS for the past 10 years to support the development of their people using knowledge and skills gained on and off the pitch, and I hope we’ll be working with this new growing Suffolk team in the years to come.”
Jon Fisher continued: “Initially, the Bury office will accommodate 10 people – with other GRS colleagues visiting regularly – but we have space to grow, and we anticipate building a diverse team as the demand for our materials and services increases in the region. To achieve that our approach is always to recruit locally, providing training and opportunities that support personal development. We have already been in touch with West Suffolk College, and we are keen to develop links with other likeminded organisations in Suffolk."
GRS has been involved in numerous national infrastructure schemes such as Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset and is the biggest supplier of aggregates to the HS2 rail link through Rail Stone Solutions. In the East of England GRS was involved in the new A14 and is supplying a series of improvement projects with Anglian Water.
The annual demand for construction aggregates in the East of England looks set to exceed 20 million tonnes in the years ahead, but the region’s geology means that essential crushed rock, such as granite and limestone, has to be brought in from elsewhere in the country. The most efficient way to do that is by rail and by sea to minimise lorry miles and carbon emissions – something that GRS has specialised in over recent years. Still, road vehicles are almost always needed for the last few miles, so GRS will be looking to partner with the right independent hauliers to work alongside its own truck fleet.
With a business model all about resource efficiency, GRS sees an opportunity to meet the Eastern region’s demand for aggregates with secondary materials made from inert wastes. One example is Enviroc® granite, a by-product of mining for china clay and other minerals in Cornwall and Devon, which GRS already imports into London by sea. Another example is IBAA (incinerator bottom ash aggregate), an inert mixture of rubble, ceramics and glass from the energy-from-waste process, which GRS already supplies in the Midlands.
