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The new bowling club and community facility for Coed Talon at Pontybodkin received a £152,000 grant from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund for Wales.

The new building, completed earlier this Spring, caters for bowling club members as well as the wider local community who use it for functions, meetings, and activity groups. It replaced an old and dilapidated building just used by the bowling club.

First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones said:  “I was pleased to open the Coed Talon Bowling Clubhouse and Community Facility.  Not only does it provide people with a valuable community facility where they can meet, but it will also help encourage participation in sport and physical activity, which is a key Government priority.”

Project leader Tom Middlehurst said: “Thanks to the fantastic support of the Welsh aggregates industry we now have a wonderful new facility benefitting the whole of our local community for generations to come”.

Ross Halley, Lafarge Aggregates Planning and Estates Manager, said: “We were delighted to support the application for grant from the Sustainability Fund because as an industry we want to re-direct more investment like this into the communities that live around extraction sites”.

The new facility was built by Welsh construction workers and the vast majority of building materials were made in Wales. The only exception being solar panels on the roof which convert sunlight into electricity and help reduce the running costs of the centre.

Officials attending the official opening event included bowling club chair, John Langford and secretary Kath Rogers, and a representative of the Mineral Products Association of Wales and also the Aggregates Levy Fund panel, David Harding.

NOTES TO EDITORS

• The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund for Wales is administered by the Welsh Assembly to address the environmental issues associated with aggregate extraction in Wales and makes grants to community, educational and environmental projects that meet its specific criteria. Money for the fund is set aside by the UK Government through its levy on aggregates producers.

• Lafarge A&C UK is part of the world's largest building materials group and is a major UK supplier of innovative concretes and asphalts, rock, sand and gravel and waste management services. Lafarge A&C UK is proud of its hands-on approach to sustainability, which includes award-winning quarry restoration, the careful management of two National Nature Reserves and the development of sustainable, low-energy homes. Innovation and architectural creativity are at the heart of Lafarge's priorities and in 2010, for the sixth year in a row, Lafarge was listed in the ‘Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World’*.

• The Lafarge Group is the world leader in building materials, with top-ranking positions in all of its businesses: Cement, Aggregates & Concrete and Gypsum.

• Find ‘Lafarge UK’ on Facebook.

* Source: Corporate Knights Inc.  www.global100.com

Lafarge operates a crushed rock site, about five miles from Pontybodkin, at Graig Quarry.

CONTACTS

For additional information, or interview requests, please contact Lafarge press officer Steve Childs on 01773 834022 or 07786 133505, OR Tom Middlehurst on 01352 779072. Alternatively please find further information about Lafarge on the web site at www.lafarge.co.uk.