Industrial mineral suppliers crush, grind, grade and bag silica, quartz, feldspar, barytes, bentonite and similar material for foundries, ceramics, paint and paper makers. This is how to run plant crews, lab analysts, loaders and dispatch staff around dust, grades and truck queues.
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Share your requirementsAn industrial mineral supplier buys or mines raw rock and sells it in a usable form: lumps, grits, powders of a stated fineness, or bagged material for a given use. A small plant may have a few purchase staff who deal with mine owners, a crushing and grinding crew, a sieve or lab room, a bagging line, loaders, weighbridge clerks and a sales desk that talks to foundries, ceramic units, paint makers and glass plants. Customers buy to a grade, such as fineness, whiteness or moisture, and reject a lot that misses it. The work is dusty, loud and heavy. Trucks arrive in bunches and wait. A single wrong bag label can mean a returned load. Staff are often local, daily-paid and long serving, with knowledge held in the head. For the wider sector, read HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in industrial mineral suppliers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Grinding, screening and bagging fill the air with fine particles, and masks are worn badly or not at all by workers who feel fine today.
The mill operator who knows how the machine runs when the feed changes is hard to replace, and a bad week follows his leave.
The analyst fails a lot, the plant says the sample was wrong, and nobody owns the argument or the rework.
Drivers, loaders and clerks work through long queues, then idle, and overtime and temper both swing wildly.
A wrong grade tag or a short weight comes back as a complaint, and the packer is blamed without any check of the process.
Workers leave for a nearby plant for a small rise, often at the busiest time of the month.
Bag handling and loading are repetitive, and back and shoulder pain is dismissed until the person stops coming.
Customers phone the mill hand about a delay or a grade, and promises are made that sales never hear about.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a industrial mineral suppliers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
For each product, list who sets the mill, who samples, who passes and who tags.
For each product, list who sets the mill, who samples, who passes and who tags. Keep it near the machine and teach a second operator. See learning and development.
Fitted masks, wet suppression where possible, cleaning routines and a monthly check on who is wearing what.
Fitted masks, wet suppression where possible, cleaning routines and a monthly check on who is wearing what. See health, safety and wellbeing.
Every failed lot recorded with the cause, the fix and the person who agreed it, reviewed weekly by the plant head.
Every failed lot recorded with the cause, the fix and the person who agreed it, reviewed weekly by the plant head.
Fix loading windows with regular buyers, and plan crew hours around them, with rest after long queues.
Fix loading windows with regular buyers, and plan crew hours around them, with rest after long queues. Rules sit in attendance, shifts and leave.
A short start-up check on labels, weight and grade tags, signed by the packer and the supervisor.
A short start-up check on labels, weight and grade tags, signed by the packer and the supervisor.
Route calls and promises through sales, and give the plant a simple note format to pass delay news upward.
Route calls and promises through sales, and give the plant a simple note format to pass delay news upward.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Dust, noise and lifting controls for mill and bagging crews.
Backup operators for each grade and machine.
Shift patterns that match truck arrival and long waits.
Plant and loader day rates set against nearby units.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
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A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
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Provide fitted masks, keep the plant clean, damp down where possible and check use every month. Confirm legal exposure requirements with a qualified professional.
Write down each grade's mill steps, then train a second person on the same machine. Rotate them in during normal weeks, not only in emergencies.
Add a start-up label and weight check signed by two people, and log every complaint with its cause. Look for process gaps before blaming a packer.
Pay on time, give steady hours, show a clear step from helper to operator and listen to what the loaders say. Small, reliable things hold people better than a one-time rise.
One named sales contact. The plant passes updates to that person, who tells the buyer. This stops mill hands making promises.
We would walk the plant, list who holds which grade knowledge, and set up a simple skills list, dust routine and failure log. We do not do legal advice or payroll filings, and scope is written down after we talk.
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