Aggregates & Environment

The Aggregates & Environment Division houses the historical activities of Groupe Pigeon: the production and processing of aggregates and lime. It is at the heart of Groupe Pigeon's development strategy and benefits from synergies with the group's other divisions, notably Infrastructure & Works and Construction & Concrete (ready-mix concrete and prefabrication).

Extract, Transform, Enhance, Redevelop

The quarrying of solid rock, sand, limestone, and the recovery of aggregates are an essential activity for Groupe Pigeon and more generally for the land development sector, producing the raw materials necessary for the construction and completion of public works sites (roads and engineering structures), but also for buildings (ready-mix concrete and prefabrication of concrete elements).

The name of the Aggregates & Environment division confirms the ambitions and positioning that Groupe Pigeon aims to achieve for its historical extraction activities: to adopt a global approach linking industrial activity, circular economy , and biodiversity.

The extraction and processing activities of Groupe Pigeon are expanding and are now enriched by the recovery of co-products, the development of new ranges of materials from the recycling and deconstruction sectors, and the waste development and excavation management offers.

The logic of the circular economy is at the heart of the Aggregates & Environment division's development strategy, which aims to transform and recover mineral materials from local quarries, while restoring the exploited land over the long term to its initial configuration, or otherwise pursuing a positive impact in terms of biodiversity using innovative and adapted development solutions.

Aggregate recovery and environmental management are at the heart of the Aggregates & Environment division's activities. Groupe Pigeon aims to capitalize on the close link between aggregates and the environment throughout the entire life cycle:

Optimizing our businesses and expertise in the extraction, processing, storage and delivery of aggregates, and the reception of excavated material.
The development of our recycling, reprocessing and reuse of excavated material.
The multiple development of its sites and land areas, through intelligent and responsible development projects and management of excavated material and waste, in close collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders.

Lime: A high-performance industrial tool and a complete range of services for a natural and versatile product

The Aggregates & Environment division produces and recovers limestone by firing it into lime for a wide range of applications, such as soil treatment and stabilization for public works, and soil improvers for the fertilization of agricultural land.

Groupe Pigeon's know-how in the lime segment is now recognised by the main players in the market, particularly through the Chaux Saint-Pierre brand. The high-performance production tools enable us to deliver to the western half of France, and even the entire country for elaborate products.

The Aggregates & Environment business line's industrial lime units provide a full range of services to our customers, in addition to the technical industrial solutions offered: delivery and application of products to agricultural plots, marketing support, agronomic training at distributors and production plants, sales force promotion, and recovery of quarry by-products and excavated materials to obtain usable and storable materials.

Français

Les chiffres clés

12
million
tonnes produced

52
sites

€122
million
turnover

410
employees

A wide range of products and packaging to meet all your needs

Aggregate, also called aggregate, is a fragment of rock intended to be used in the composition of materials employed in the manufacture of public works, civil engineering and construction. It is the most important subsoil resource exploited in France. After water, it is also the first resource consumed by man (7 to 9T/year/inhabitant, source UNICEM).

Groupe Pigeon has more than 50 sites in operation, enabling it to offer a wide range of quality products:

Natural gravels used in all types of public works, roadway underlay, drainage, backfill, platforms.
Sands and gravels intended for industrial activities such as concrete plants, asphalt plants, and prefabrication plants.
Decorative materials used for all outdoor landscaping, gardens, yards and terraces. Groupe Pigeon operates a granite quarry in Morbihan, IGP Granit de Bretagne, and produces aggregates and cut stones from top quality deposits for historical and heritage sites.
Recycled materials from deconstruction collected and crushed on our dedicated platforms, giving new life to these materials, particularly for the concrete sector (ready- mix concrete and prefabricated concrete elements).
SabléO is Groupe Pigeon's range of stabilised sands. It is composed of eight 100% natural colours, thanks to the naturally coloured sands used. SabléO is an innovative and aesthetic solution, whose unique formula was developed by the Research & Development department of the CBTP Laboratory, a subsidiary of Groupe Pigeon. SabléO is a first class technical solution for the development of cycle paths, footpaths, pavements, park and garden paths, playgrounds, but also the surroundings of houses and historical monuments.
Fertilizers for agriculture: calcareous amendments, dolomitic amendments, dried products, carbonates, quicklime.

Groupe Pigeon also offers a number of services that can be customized to your needs:

Delivery of aggregates to the site in various forms (bulk, big bags, and gabions).
On-site crushing by providing a mobile crushing unit on your sites or construction sites.
The reception of inert waste mainly from the building and public works sector within our quarries authorised for backfilling or our recycling platforms, such as mixed rubble, previously sorted deconstruction concrete, inert earth, and other inert waste subject to a prior acceptance certificate.
Delivery and application of carbonates and lime in "root rendering" on agricultural plots.
The production of marketing materials and the provision of agronomic training on the benefits of lime and carbonates to cooperatives and farmers.

Preserving the environment and biodiversity is at the heart of the quarry development strategy

The various industrial sites of the Aggregates & Environment division are also committed to an active environmental management approach, with a view to the sustainable use of resources and efficient integration into their natural and human environment (ISO 14001 certification and the Quarry Industry Environmental Charter).

The operation of our quarries aims to generate a positive impact on biodiversity by creating a diversity of environments that did not exist locally and by raising the awareness of our employees on the various environmental issues.

To give some specific examples, several of our sites welcome bank swallows every year during their migration in sand stocks that are preserved as soon as the first nests appear.
The peregrine falcon, a threatened species after the use of a pesticide, has also colonized some of our sites and their monitoring is the subject of a partnership with the association Bretagne Vivante, which provides advice and awareness to our teams to promote the falcon’s reproduction and therefore the sustainability of the species.
The creation of water points and the management of pumped water with analysis and treatment to correct natural acidity if necessary are all assets favourable to the development of fauna and flora near our sites.
Groupe Pigeon has also installed several dozen beehives on its quarry sites, both active and inactive, in partnership with local beekeepers. Faced with the structural decline in the number of bees in France, and the importance of bees at all levels, Groupe Pigeon aims with this initiative to participate in the fight against this decline. The quarries thus represent an important potential with regard to their positive biodiversity, and the important development of honey production.

These environmental concerns are fully in line with our desire to develop a broader CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) approach for the entire group.

The Aggregates & Environment division entities

Granulats & Environnement

Link to the Infrastructure & Works division's locations