A top global crushing and screening equipment manufacturer believes its first complete stationary plant in the UK will lead to many more similar installations for customers in one of Europe’s biggest national aggregates markets. Meanwhile, another multi-brand international aggregates processing equipment giant is investing heavily in several of its major production facilities. Guy Woodford reports.
The up to 350tonnes/hour, maximum 700mm initial feed bespoke plant includes full Sandvik plant monitoring technology, a feeder and ST1263 grizzly screen, ASRi crusher control, a CJ411 jaw crusher, a CH440 cone crusher with San Remo control system, and SS1233H and SK2163 screens, both with dust encapsulation solutions, the latter including 7-20mm Sandvik rubber screening media. The plant also features an SP1020 vibrating feeder, a 20m³ surge bin, AR400 wear plates, a BR555 boom breaker system, and a galvanised steel-inclusive belt conveyor package. All this allows Marshalls to produce up to seven different products at any one time.
Sitting on a specially dug-out site at Howley Park, the giant tailor-made plant was installed in around three months after foundation stones were laid. It is based on 3D software designs born out of many months of discussion between Sandvik engineering experts and senior Marshalls executives.
Andrew Robinson, managing director of Marshalls’ minerals division, said: “Our market is very immediate. It is about delivering what the customer wants when they want it. We wanted a plant that would allow us to produce seven different high-quality products at once. When we put the project out to tender, Sandvik said they could supply it. Other manufacturers wanted to offer us something more standard.”
The UK’s leading hard landscaping manufacturer, Marshalls has been supplying superior natural stone and innovative concrete products to the construction, home improvement and landscape markets since the 1890s. The company produces a wide range of premium sandstone and limestone products, ranging from -2mm dust to 200mm.
Prior to the cutting-edge Sandvik plant installation, Howley Park had been using third-party crushing and screening contractors. Around 25% of Howley Park is being used for minerals processing, with the site holding around 50 years of mineral reserves.
On the role of 3D design in the Sandvik Howley Park project, Robinson said: “If the plant design works in 3D, it works in real life. The 3D plant design answered questions like: Is the plant configuration right and does it allow me easy access to each section of it? What are the stockpiles going to look like? How will the loaders get around the site? Everyone has a different picture in their mind of how something may look. It is always an easier sell to people when they can visualise a plant.”
With the assistance of Marshalls, Sandvik held a customer day at the Village Inn in Tingley, West Yorkshire, on 5 October 2018 to allow influential people from aggregates companies to learn about and explore the entirely Sandvik-designed and manufactured Marshalls’ Howley Park plant.
The event began with a short presentation on the three distinct fixed plant approaches Sandvik can now offer its UK customer base. These are FastPlant, SmartPlant and CustomPlant, the latter being the approach taken for Marshalls, resulting in a fully bespoke installation.
The group of 60 event attendees was split in two. One group left for the nearby Howley Park Quarry to see the new turnkey plant up close, with Sandvik plant experts and
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Speaking during the customer day about Marshalls’ Sandvik turnkey plant installation Mark Bodell, sales manager for Sandvik stationary crushing & screening – England and Wales, said: “The plant will have a minimum life of 25 years and represents a big investment for Marshalls. We have worked as a partnership from day one and it has been an enjoyable experience. We are very proud of the plant. We will continue to work closely with Marshalls and will adjust the plant if they want to process different materials to those currently being produced.
“Sandvik has for some time had turnkey plants in countries such as Australia and Sweden, and when I became Sandvik’s England and Wales stationary plant sales manager in July 2016 I was clear that I wanted to bring complete plant solutions to the UK. The interest we have had from major British building materials suppliers in our turnkey plants has been quite phenomenal. There are a lot of plants in the design stage and Howley Park will be the first of many Sandvik UK turnkey stationary plant installations.”
Investments in research and development, a bespoke parts warehouse, and telematics technology, along with broad-based economic growth and construction activity globally has led to demand for Terex MP products being at an all-time high. To cope with this demand and enable an increase in output, while also boosting production efficiency, Terex MP is investing in and expanding three of its manufacturing facilities – Hosur in India, Coalville in England, and Omagh in Northern Ireland, along with a new manufacturing facility soon to be announced.
Kieran Hegarty, president of Terex MP, said: “These plans are due to be completed over the next six months and will support us in getting our machines to our customers, when they want them.”
The Hosur facility is expanding its current 15-acre facility with plans representing over £5 million (€5.6mn) of investment.
Aftermarket support and shot blasting and paint operations will move from the main building into new bespoke buildings – a 3,300m² shot blasting and paint shop facility and 1,980m² integrated aftermarket facility – which will allow for additional space and improved efficiency in the main build area for production ramp-up. The bespoke integrated aftermarket facility, which opened at the end of 2018, will include a new parts warehouse with an upgraded logistics system that deals with all picking, packing, delivery functions and storage. The building will also encompass an office block and dedicated refurbishment shop and engine repair facility. A new rock test lab has also been set up to study rock to aid in the prediction of performance.
To cope with increasing demand for machine components and offset pressure on the supply chain, the team in India is working with existing suppliers to operate a new 1,320m² machine shop within the Hosur site. Hosur will finance the building and electrical power for the machine shop, while suppliers will provide equipment and skilled manpower to run it.
Finally, a new training centre to cater for increased training needs – from both Terex and dealer service engineers and for new manpower – is being built and due to be completed in June 2019.
Over the past four years the crushing chamber production facility at Coalville has seen its volumes grow significantly due to Terex MP’s manufacturing footprint consolidation to help meet demand. The site is undergoing continued increase in head-count and £2.5 million (EURO 2.8mn) of investments in equipment and site facilities to enhance manufacturing capability and to take on full plant assembly for some of Terex MP’s leading brands.
Full assembly onsite at Coalville is also now possible thanks to a new paint facility, which has been installed as a new building adjoined to the existing building so that it would not use existing manufacturing floor space.
A new state-of-the-art robotic welder is now helping produce mainframes. As well as improving efficiency, a more consistent final product quality is ensured by the repeated automated process.
Another investment at Coalville includes a new horizontal boring machine. At 2m x 2.2m wide and 6.2m high, the machine is thought to be one of the largest of its type in the UK. As well as handling existing chamber products, it will also handle larger chambers that are currently in the design phase.
Finally, as Coalville is an important source of spare parts for Terex MP, a more advanced machine for producing equipment components and spare parts has been recently installed, and with many new features will enhance the production of spare parts to cope with the increasing demand.
The Omagh crushing manufacturing site is to undergo a £3.5 million (€3.92mn) expansion. This includes building over 1,860m² of welding stations to allow for increased welding capacity, along with 1,020m² of offices and 3,715m² of stores and new product development process assembly. These buildings will also free up production space to support growth across the business.
Kieran Hegarty said: “These investments will support our ongoing growth and development as we seek to build on the momentum of increased demand for our products globally.”
Finnish global crushing and screening solution giant Metso is introducing new higher capacity models to its NW Rapid wheel-mounted crusher series.
NW Rapid units can be delivered in standard containers from the factory and are designed to be easily movable from one site to another, using standard prime movers. Metso says the flexibility of the concept allows producers to profitably offer their customers contracts of various sizes.
The NW Rapid series is designed for producing high-quality end products with multi-stage crushing and screening units. The NW120 Rapid jaw model will now be joined by the screen-equipped NW330GPS and NW300HPS cone crushers. The NW4MXS is the latest introduction to the series and brings the MX4 Multi-Action cone crusher, launched in 2017, to the integrated crushing solution for the first time. Serial production of the NW4MXS will start in the second half of 2019. For other models, Metso says its factories are already working to bring new machines to customers globally.
NW Rapid is designed to be set up and dismantled in 24 hours. It has 11 pre-designed layouts to speed up planning of the crushing process. The solution consists of modules that can be used to create a variety of combinations as needed.
“A large share of our customers supply aggregates for public infrastructure projects that can last from a few months to a couple of years,” says Julius Mäkelä, Metso director of portable and modular solutions. “Depending on the project phase, our customers must have the ability to also offer very high capacity.”
He added that the new NW Rapid models enable production capacity to temporarily be increased up to 500 tonnes/hour, which is equal to the capacity of a fixed plant.
The NW Rapid series models are electric driven and have Metso’s IC Series crushing automation as a standard feature. In addition, they can be connected to the Metso Metrics remote monitoring service, which allows central monitoring of the entire crushing fleet’s production and energy consumption.
