John Macaulay is Quarry Manager at Soutra Mains Quarry, bringing almost four decades of national and international experience in quarrying, aggregates, and materials production.
John’s career began at Glensanda, where he worked across crushing and screening, maintenance and shiploading operations. From there, he progressed through supervisory, shift management and quarry management roles, building a strong technical and operational foundation across large-scale quarry environments.
Over his 38-year career, John has spent 20 years working in the UK with businesses including Foster Yeoman, Aggregate Industries, Tarmac, and Hillhouse Group. He has also spent 18 years working internationally with organisations including Winstone Aggregates in New Zealand, Stevin Rock and Western Bainoona Group in the United Arab Emirates, Julius Berger in Nigeria, Chip Mong Industries in Cambodia and Lumina Sustainable Materials in Greenland.
His international experience has included quarry and mine site management, as well as wider company and country-level responsibilities. This has given John a broad perspective on operational performance, team leadership and the challenges of delivering safely and efficiently across different environments, cultures, and markets.
Throughout his career, John has contributed to several major global infrastructure and development projects. These include the supply of materials for the UK side of the Channel Tunnel wall segment construction, artificial islands for Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the Zakum oil field, Palm Jumeirah in Dubai and the New Doha International Airport runway in Qatar. He has also led the relocation of a multi-line crushing plant for a major infrastructure project in Dubai and helped establish a new quarry business on a greenfield site in Cambodia.
John’s professional highlights include developing sites to achieve industry best practice in challenging locations, often working with multicultural teams and complex operational demands. His approach is built around clear accountability, practical leadership and creating strong communication across all levels of a site.
Having worked for both major international groups and privately owned businesses, John values a flatter management structure where responsibility, trust and information flow support effective decision-making. It was this combination of business scale, strong company history and long-term leadership that attracted him to Hillhouse Group.
Reflecting on his role, John comments:
Throughout my career, I’ve found that strong performance comes from clear accountability, good communication and developing teams who can meet challenges head-on. Hillhouse stood out to me as a business with the right values, the right scale and a strong long-term approach.
Fala
Pathhead
Blackshiels
Midlothian
EH37 5TF
