With more than 40 years’ experience in the industry, Burdett’s supplies a range of high-quality products including landscaping gear and ready-mixed concrete, with over 70% of product output from its quarrying operations going to the garden and turf industry.
At its existing Langwarrin site, Burdett’s operates a wash plant that accepts material from a range of sites to be blended; however, the 15-year-old plant is unable to meet current market demands
Having acquired its new site in Lang Lang (around 75km south-east of Melbourne), which also has its own resource, Burdett’s sought to commission a robust and reliable solution that could process material extracted on-site and from local quarries. The goal was to relieve pressures on its existing operations, maximise operational efficiency and add value to existing products.
Using its co-creation approach, CDE worked closely with Burdett’s to fully understand what the business wanted to achieve from the plant and developed a turnkey solution to meet the company’s objectives.
Lang Lang is a site with a high-water table, so Burdett’s required a plant that had the flexibility to take a dry excavated feed as well as a dredge feed. The conventional mining process of extracting material from water and leaving it to dry out and dewater is extremely labour-intensive and increases operational costs.
In response, CDE commissioned a dredge feed system, meaning that once Burdett’s reaches the water table it can dredge wet slurry feed to the plant. This removed the intermediatory step of having to dewater material first, which in turn reduced operational and labour costs.
As Burdett’s specialises in the supply of various products, the integration of CDE’s dual sliding conveyors to create blended products removed the requirement for manually blending material with a loader, which also contributed to maximising operational efficiency.
CDE designed and installed an advanced 250tph wet processing solution to produce high-quality washed sands, incorporating a dual EvoWash sand wash plant, dredge sump, Infinity design ProGrade screen, feed hopper and dual sliding blending conveyors.
A compact, modular sand washing system, CDE’s EvoWash screens and separates the smaller sand and gravel fractions through an integrated high-frequency dewatering screen. The hydrocyclone technology provides impressive control of silt cut points and eliminates the loss of quality fines.
CDE’s ProGrade screen separates out the 15mm and +5mm fractions, delivering a high power-to-weight ratio and reducing overall power consumption. The screens are built to last, with an independent spray bar assembly protected from vibration, which ensures maximum durability and allows Burdett’s to meet production targets.
CDE’s advanced classification and dewatering technology increases the accuracy of separation and delivers high-quality product with less than 15% moisture content straight off the belt, eliminating the need for drying.
With the support of the CDE wet processing technology, Burdett’s is now producing fine sand for the turf industry and a blend of coarse sand to make concrete sand and filter grades for the drying plant. Its turf, brick and foundry sands are currently being supplied to the garden, turf and construction industries. Burdett said the plant was now exceeding expectations.
Burdett’s director Andrew Burdett commented: “We’re able to produce the same products as on the old plant, but with CDE’s technology our products are of superior quality and we’ve been able to improve overall efficiency, The plant was specified to meet 200tph; however, we’ve established that it’s actually processing up to 250tph, which is beyond our expectations and allows us to increase the capacity of our operations even further."
CDE business development manager for Australasia Riccardo Wong said of the Burdett's deployment: “From the beginning, we listened and identified what they were looking for and engineered a solution that responded directly to their immediate needs for improved operational efficiency and maximum product quality."
