Penrice Academy students awestruck on Imerys tour
One hundred year nine students from St Austell’s Penrice Academy recently enjoyed a careers event at the Littlejohns kaolin mine in the UK.
First up was a bus tour around Clay Country, where the students learnt about the local mining history - such as the old clay tips. They then visited Littlejohns kaolin mine just outside of Roche. This is the largest kaolin mine in the world - with a perimeter of 7 miles - it would fit 300 football pitches! The groups were met by a mining engineer and geologist for a talk in wild and windy conditions!
They then travelled onwards to Rocks drying site, just outside of Bugle. Work had shut down for the day and the entire team pulled together to create a mini-exhibition. Students enjoyed talks focused around sustainability in different areas of the business, and what career opportunities are available. This touched on environment, health and safety, science and technology, energy and engineering, lithium production with Imerys British Lithium, plus mining and processing of kaolin.
Watch a quick overview of their visit below!
What a fantastic day! The thing that I noticed the most was how awestruck the students were with the scale of operations at Imerys. From £20,000 truck tyres to enormous quarry pits which are 400 metres wide and deep; the scale is hard to comprehend.
It was great to hear about the skills and career journeys of the employees we met, and how their roles have evolved over time. There were lots of questions from curious students and lots of smiles throughout the day. All in all, it was a resounding success!
We were delighted to host this group. Supporting local education is crucial for Imerys in the UK, as we work to attract the next generation of Imerys employees. We offer an incredible range of career opportunities for people of all ages - from those starting out to anyone looking for a new challenge.
Preserving biodiversity also means looking beyond our sites. When our impacts on nature cannot be totally avoided, reduced or restored, we move on to the ultimate stage: offset. This final phase of the biodiversity mitigation hierarchy aims to balance the scales by generating biodiversity gains outside our sites at least equivalent to the losses caused by our activities.
Discover how we implement offset measures through concrete examples of wetlands and habitat restoration in Sandersville, USA, and in Clérac, France.
From a volcanic island in Greece to a forest in Austria, we adapt to the unique local climatic conditions of each site with the same objective: to bring nature back by restoring our quarries.
When our impacts on nature cannot be completely avoided or minimized, the third step of the biodiversity mitigation hierarchy aims at repairing what extractive activities are altering.
In this third article of our biodiversity campaign, we move on to the second step of the mitigation hierarchy: Minimization. This step of the biodiversity mitigation hierarchy, focuses on reducing residual impacts throughout the lifecycle of our projects. By combining scientific expertise, local adaptation, and employee engagement, Imerys is actively working to minimize its impact on natural heritage. From protecting peregrine falcons in the United Kingdom (UK) to managing invasive species in Thailand, our teams around the world are taking actions to safeguard biodiversity.
To preserve natural heritage, it is essential to anticipate and limit impacts right from the project design phase. This involves rigorous analysis of the ecological context and the implementation of appropriate measures to minimize our footprint on ecosystems.
In the previous article, we presented our commitments, strategy, protocols and tools built with scientific experts and deployed across the Group to help protect biodiversity. For this second article, we talk about the first and crucial stage of the biodiversity mitigation hierarchy.