A family-owned quarry is using innovative practices to meet sand demands in central west NSW through its reserves of decomposed granite.
Bathurst Quarries has supported local campaign-type projects in the region, including roadworks or site developments in Bathurst, since it was first approved in 1997.
But in 2015, the first of three pivotal moments in the family-owned business occurred.
Colin and Mary-Rose Townsend, who owned and operated the quarry, secured state government approval for a 100,000 tonnes per annum extraction limit with a 50-year extraction lease.
“That was a huge achievement by my parents to get that. Once that approval had been granted, it was an opportunity to build the business around that,” said Will Townsend, quarry manager at Bathurst Quarries.
The pair still own and operate the business, but in 2017, Will returned to the family business after previously working at Nestlé. While Nestlé is more renowned for confectionary and cereals, Will’s lessons from his previous line of work have been translated to the quarry.
“After they got the approval, I was just trying to help them get things rolling, and ultimately, I ended up leaving my career with Nestlé to go play in the sand pit,” Will told Quarry.
“I was really trying to hone in on the systems. We run on the notion that systems run the business and the people run the systems.
“So I am making sure that everything is nice and tidy, from compliance, safety, and reliability [standpoint], that production has a system around it, and that our employees are well-versed in those.”
The third factor was Colin Townsend conducting some small-scale experimentation with the quarry’s pre-existing decomposed granite reserve.
He discovered through washing the material through an old Finlay screen and a sand screw that it was possible to create quality washed sand. Local batch plants conducted quality trials of the new material, proving it could be a successful input to their batching.
At first glance, the three moments appear to be unrelated, but each has played a critical role in Bathurst Quarries’ journey to develop manufactured sand.
The Townsend family wanted to transform Bathurst Quarries from a business reliant on campaign projects into one with a consistent business flow throughout the year.
The new extraction limit and the security of the 50-year lease and the discovery of the new manufactured sand made this possible.
While they could have kept selling decomposed granite as a dry product, they saw an opportunity in the sand market and believed in the quality of their product.
The company noticed that many of the alluvial sand deposits had been diminished in the Central West region of New South Wales. Given that many of the reserves had been exhausted through extraction, this created a void of sand producers within the region.
The success of Colin’s experimentation gave them the spark of an idea.
“That gave us some confidence to ahead and build a fixed plant to make a quality washed sand from our raw material which is the decomposed granite. From a sales stability point of view, that meant we had a nice, even approach to sales day-on-day rather than a project every few months,” Will said.
Will conducted an extensive investigation with his friend Matt Farley, which included 13 sites along the east coast of Australia and sites overseas in China.
The research trip, which saw Will welcomed by IQA members to learn about manufactured sand, played a significant role in Bathurst Quarries’ project. The likes of Hanson, Boral, PF Formation, Pioneer Sands, Walkers and many others opened their doors in a show of generosity Will is thankful for.
“I was just ringing people up and asking to visit … and the quarrying industry is fantastic. They welcomed me in and showed me with pride how they did it, which was fantastic. It had a remarkable influence. Just having exposure to how those sites run was tremendously valuable, and then, to get more detail on how they were washing and dewatering, I just took snippets from everywhere,” Will said.
“With my knowledge of these sites, I had some confidence that we could produce a product. I also went to China and looked at three manufacturers of fixed plants to potentially import and commission on our site. We determined that we could probably build a fit-for-purpose plant economically rather than import.”
However, as a family-owned and operated operation, they needed to manage to build the new fixed plant alongside managing their day-to-day business and existing mobile plant, with the cash flow funding the new project.
Due to this, Bathurst Quarries implemented a three-phase approach to the project, starting with a washing plant and dewatering plant in phase one. The screen enabled the sand fractions to be washed and separated while the sand screws dewatered the material before it was stockpiled via a conveyor.
Through the initial product trials, the company noticed that in trying to obtain a 3–5mm-size product, around 45-55 per cent of the material was yielding pea gravel. The pea gravel was a slow-moving product that was not in high demand and stockpiling it was taking up valuable room on the site.
This led to the second phase, which saw the implementation of a vertical shaft impactor to crush the material down to the target size of 3mm. This significantly reduced the byproduct and increased the saleable material suitable for sand. The third and final stage was a primary dry screening system, which involved a feed hopper and a large primary screen where oversized material would be shafted back to the VSI crusher.
All the correctly sized material was shafted to the washing and dewatering plant for washing and separating.
“As a small-scale business, we didn’t have a lot of capital or cash flow, so we had to be progressive with how we went about manufacturing new pieces of equipment,” Will said.
“We built all of the fixed plant. It is all-electric, it is all PLC-controlled and it is operated via a tablet in the front-end loader instead of a manned plant room. A big part of our ethos is to produce more with less, so produce more volume with a reduced head count.
“To date, it is working beautifully.”
The project, which took four years to complete, has transformed the family-owned business by adding a new revenue stream while maintaining its values. It was completely built within the on-site workshop by the employees.
“It was a really heavy few years; they were big days for seven days a week. It didn’t stop, but you just accepted it as the norm,” Will said.
“We were so committed, not out of desire or passion but out of absolute necessity. The commitment was absolute from the first purchase order because we had to see it through.”
The largely autonomous plant produces around 100 tonnes per hour, and one employee controls the entire processing operation.
“It is very important for us as a business to be very good at the basics and efficient so we can compete in the market. Being able to do more with less is how we keep going in business,” Will said.
“I believe we’ve established ourselves well within the market now.” •
For more information, visit bathurstquarries.au
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