This week marked the end of an era for an Awatoto land mark with the demolition of Winstone Aggregates' shingle plant, which records show began operating as the Awatoto Shingle Company around 1920.
A Winstones spokesperson said the plant was damaged in the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, to the extent that it was condemned and had not been used since.
The company had switched to a mobile extraction unit in the meantime, but when its resource consent expired last year consolidated the shingle extraction to its Roy Hill operation.
She said extraction activity at the site had been undertaken by previous entities since the 1930s, and by Winstones since the 1980s.
In the past, large volumes of material had been extracted from the site, reducing to 50,000m3 per year between 1991 and 2002, and then to 30,000m3 per year from 2006 to when the current consent expired in 2017.