An old quarry can always look at new ways of enhancing its production methods.
German aggregate business Terratec Basalt GmbH was looking to cut its production costs by changing its processing method from stationary plant and equipment to mobile plant. Metso’s Lokotrack LT220D “two-in-one” plant is helping the company to achieve that goal.
“We estimate that we’ll gain 25 to 30 per cent savings by gradually changing our quarry from stationary to mobile,” said Karl-Werner Bierbrauer, the managing director and owner of Terratec Basalt GmbH.
“The resulting 1.0-1.5 Euro [$AUD1.60-2.40] per metric tonne saving is really significant for us. Our savings are based on cutting out half the transportation of the blasted rock to processing. Instead of bringing rocks to the old top of the hill stationary plant, we only need to transport the materials to the nearby Lokotrack mobile process.”
Beginning life in 1962 under family company A Caspar Basaltwerk in Ettringen, a Bavarian city west of Munich, the quarry operation today is renowned for its high quality aggregates, produced from basalt and volcanic lava. Terratec Basalt bought the family company in early 2017.
“For us, buying the quarry means extending our present business of renting mobile crushing plants and screens and transporting,” Bierbrauer said. “For the time being, we will run the quarry [with] both stationary and mobile capacities. We hope to be able to close the stationary quarry in two years.”
Bierbrauer & Sohn GmbH, a sister company of Terratec Basalt, is known for having the biggest Lokotrack fleet in Germany – it leases 12 Lokotracks.
The mobile process that has already started at the former Basaltwerk quarry will include three track-mounted Metso units: a Lokotrack LT106 jaw plant, an ST2.4 mobile screen and an LT220D cone plant with a screen. The LT220D is the first one of its kind being used in Germany.
Blasted basalt and lava is fed first to the LT106 primary jaw plant, which feeds the materials to the ST2.4 screen.
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The screen separates 80-120mm oversized from 0-80mm sizes that are taken to the LT220D combined cone/screen plant. The main end products from the LT220D are 0-2mm, 3-8mm and 8-16mm.
The high quality end products are used in various applications in the region, notably in road construction and as isolation and base materials at construction sites.
Terratec Basalt will eventually lower production from current levels of 300,000 tonnes per year to some 150,000 tonnes. The hourly capacity with the mobile Lokotrack process will be 150 to 250 tonnes.
“We will concentrate on quality products rather than bulk,” Bierbrauer said, “and we believe we’ll achieve better profitability with this kind of operating strategy. At the end of the day, the value of accurately classified macadam will be much higher.”
The Australian distributor of Metso Lokotracks and other mobile plant is Tutt Bryant Equipment.
Source: Metso