About Us

Isle of Wight Aggregates Ltd is the largest marine aggregate supplier on the Island based at Medina Wharf, West Cowes. the business has traded locally for many years serving the Island trade, and all are qualified plant and machinery operators.

We pride ourselves in supplying the best quality materials at competitive prices and offer an island wide delivery service. Our wharf has an excellent safety record and we are 14001 certified. Regular Safety & Environmental inspections are undertaken by external auditors and the parent companies.

Our aim is to use local companies where possible for repairs, supplies, machine hire and haulage. We also subscribe to many charity organisations such as Air Ambulance and Earl Mountbatten Hospice to name a few.

Parent Companies
Isle of Wight Aggregates Ltd is a Joint venture between Tarmac and Cemex. Both of our parent companies have operated individually on the island for around 35 years and are both large international companies producing a vast selection of materials. They both have their own fleet of ships dredging from various locations around the UK.

How Marine Aggregate is Extracted
Some 70% of the demand for aggregates on the Isle of Wight is met from licensed marine sand and gravel extraction sites on the sea bed both west and east of the island. These areas are over five miles offshore in water depths of between 20 and 40 metres. Extraction licences are granted by the Marine Management Organisation, subject to detailed environmental assessments and regular seabed monitoring surveys. Rights to extract marine sand and gravel are also subject to obtaining a Production Agreement from the Crown Estate, which is the seabed mineral owner.

The sand and gravel originated in fast flowing rivers during the Ice Age when what is now the seabed was exposed as dry land during times of cold climate with global sea level much lower than at present. These cold periods lasted tens of thousands of years. After the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, the deposits of flint gravel and quartz sand were submerged by the rising sea and preserved beneath the seabed within the ancient floodplains. These deposits are “fossil” and immobile in the marine environment of the present-day.

As well as providing high quality primary aggregates for construction through landings by ship at dedicated wharves, marine sand and gravel is also dredged and pumped ashore, thereby playing an important role in effectively replenishing beaches and in protecting coastlines from erosion. Satellite navigation is routinely used to position dredging vessels precisely within designated extraction zones inside the licensed dredging areas. These purpose-built ships trail a pipe slowly along the seabed and use powerful suction pumps to draw sand and gravel mixed with seawater into the cargo hold. Marine-dredged sand and gravel is off-loaded at wharves on the River Medina in Cowes where it is processed by screening and washing to produce well graded sand and 10mm and 20mm gravel, as required by the construction industry on the Island.