Modern Quarrying April-May 2017

AT THE QUARRY FACE WITH MOREGROVE

opened by his father and uncle. The trucking company had a transport con- tract with Snows Quarries, which allowed it to establish good contacts in the con- struction sector. Snows ultimately closed its own operation and joined forces with S&W. The operation, with FrankWoodward as its first quarry manager commissioned new plant in the centre of what is today the Moregrove property. The new plant increased production capacity and gave S&W an important edge in its competition with Frasers. By the early 1960s, PE was poised for growth. Major works were planned by the provincial administration and PE was becoming a main point of focus for the national roads programme, while local industrialists had expansion plans of their own. Andrew Savage’s projections on the quantities of aggregate needed for this PE construction boom were daunting – nei- ther Frasers nor S&W could cope, but as a merged operation with new, expanded plant, they would be positioned for profit and growth. This scenario appealed to JW Robertson, then head of Murray & Stewart (major stakeholders in Frasers) and a deal was struck. In the process, the merging companies took over a tiny company, PE Holdings, which had certain sand pit rights, but no capital.

Moregrove beginnings Fraser’s Quarries purchased the Farm Moregrove in 1942. Additional lots were required later with augmentation and new acquisitions becoming the recur- ring theme of the Moregrove story. A key investment in Frasers occurred in 1944 when construction firm Murray & Stewart (now Murray & Roberts) took a stake in the PE supplier. During this period, Fraser’s activities covered not only its relatively modest operations at Moregrove, but Burt Drive and Bethelsdorp quarries in PE, and the Uitenhage Crushing Station which crushed Swartkops River stone on the Kruis River road. Operations at Moregrove were labour intensive until 1947 when a large crushing screen and storage plant were erected. The vertical conveyor belt was a great advance on muscle-power and wheelbarrows. The 1950s saw a decade of increasing competition from Savage & Woodward (S&W). Andrew Savage was a prime mover in the rapid development of S&W, a quar- rying operation he founded in 1952. This quarry grew out of a transport business A bright future: Neo Bepswa, who at the time of writing was quarry foreman for Moregrove. She has since been promoted to acting and soon-to-be manager at Lafarge Saldanha in the Western Cape.

The Moregrove of 1996: This picture was taken by Sir Rupert Bromley in 1996 during an Aspasa About Face RSA audit.

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MODERN QUARRYING April - May 2017