A Timeline Of Industry Growth

1974
Ray Wall who was then operating a sand and trucking business in Ayr, saw the opportunity to purchase a quarry on the banks of the Burdekin River at Mona Park near Clare.  

1977
In 1977 John Fahey, who had a background in Civil Engineering, joined the Business full time which enabled the business to expand into civil construction such as subdivisions and infrastructure work including road and rail projects.

1984
Burdekin Concrete was established at Airdmilan Road to secure outlet of quarry product. At that time the two existing nationally operated readymix plants (Pioneer Concrete and Humes) were sourcing supply from each other using local sand and Townsville Quarry Product.
Within a very short time frame of 7 weeks, BQC Group were able to construct and commission a concrete plant on industrial land they already owned. Two agitator bowls fitted to owner driver trucks were set up to service their first customers.
Ron Sullivan was the first Plant Manager and with the support of loyal local builders the business was able to survive several years of fierce price competition even though we were not a national company with affiliations to Cement manufacturers like our competitors were.
It was quite some time before we were even allowed to have a cement account and had to purchase our cement through a third party until we could prove to North Qld Cement (the only supplier) that we were here to stay.
During the first 10 years various members and their families left the original syndicate of investors and finally coming down to just 3 families left in the business. These were Wall, Fahey and Populin.

1988
BQC Group ceased being involved in construction projects and concentrated on just its quarry and concrete operations as suppliers only and was able to consolidate core operations.
It was around this time that they purchased and developed operations at Mt Kelly mainly as a supplement to Rocks Quarry operations but also able to supply quality fill for local roadworks projects.

1994
West Euri suffered a major setback when an arsonist set fire to the weighbridge, three machines and the hay shed. Artie (the Quarry Manager at the time) lost personal items including his tractor and his car.  It was devastating for all at the time.

1998
The construction of the first truly mobile pugmill commenced. After several modifications this machine proved capable of handling over 300 t/h.
Tylden in Melbourne was able to modify a transportable cement silo fitted with a rotary valve, variable speed gear box all mounted on weigh cells, so that they were able to accurately control cement feed into the new pugmill.
The final set up which now included a large generator, compressor and operators’ cabin was not very mobile, but this prototype has served the team well to this day. A few years later we were able to duplicate this setup at the Bowen Quarry.

2000
Saw the retirement of Ray Wall and his wife from the BQC Group partnership and Ross & Gay Lewis took up a share in the quarrying operations as a supplement to their transport and sand operations. Both quarry and concrete operations continued to grow over the following years and equipment purchases changed to larger and more mobile machines, more able to cope with ever increasing product demands and changing specifications.

2000 onwards
Over time since 2000 BQC Group has supplied some major projects including:
Coalstream – Collinsville (approx. 250,000 tonne) which had a heavy hand in developing West Euri Quarry
Many Bruce Highway projects including West Barratta, Didgeridoo, Yellow Gin Creek crossing and the BSES overpass and sandy corner. All of these included concrete supply as well.

2017
John Fahey’s son, Lawrence, was introduced to the business and he brought with him the skills to help manage the complex project requirements associated with the large supply contracts that were becoming more common.
The largest train of mobile crushing equipment was also purchased this year which is now known as the Red Devil. Similar machinery has since been introduced at West Euri Quarry.

2018
BQC Group was able to develop Bahr’s pit in Giru to supply large amounts of select fill for the Haughton Floodplain Project on the Bruce Highway as well as supplying the high spec material from Rocks Quarry.  At the time this was the largest supply contract they had ever undertaken, and included establishment of a Foam Bitumen Plant in the quarry which was a first for North Queensland, with regards to plant mixed Foam Bitumen. The results achieved with respect to the Foam Bitumen strength were the highest ever seen in Australia and forced TMR to rewrite the spec to put conditions on the mix design to limit the strengths achieved. They were at the time chasing a flexible pavement.

2020
The business upgraded the batchplant to automatic batching software.

2022
The company installed the Chilled Water system at the batchplant which reduced the quantity of ice required in high spec concrete but also put the plant on par with any metropolitan batchplant.

2022
BQC Group took over Ross & Gay Lewis’s sand allocations in the Burdekin River as part of their retirement strategy. This would ensure the business always had access to sand supply and the purchase was timely as large amounts of sand was required for upcoming pipeline projects. In 2023 the operation moved across to the Home Hill side to gain access to more resource in preparation for the upcoming Haughton Pipeline project.

2024
BQC Quarries celebrates 50 years in business, Burdekin Concrete celebrates 40 years and BQC Sands marks 2 years. 

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