Breaking, Drilling & Blasting

Unigran is investing in new equipment to meet demand from its Ukrainian Malin granite quarry. Rapidly rising demand for aggregates in the Ukraine has helped double production at Unigran's Malin quarry over the last six years to reach 2million m3 per year. The company is expecting calls for material from the granite quarry to continue rising and is investing in both new equipment and its workforce to meet this.

Despite the current financial turmoil, Russia's aggregates market looks set for continued expansion. Heikki Harri reports. During the last decade the production of aggregates and related products has increased many times over in Russia and there is no seeming end to this trend. The country is committed to continuing investment in infrastructure and this means demand for aggregates will continue to grow.

BedRock Software's AggFlowSite is described by the company as the next evolution in plant simulation and optimisation for the global aggregate industry. AggFlowSite delivers the full functionality of the company's traditional AggFlow program to users via the internet, but is specifically intended for unlimited users simulating one aggregate site.

Rock drilling tool specialist Rockmore International has announced plans to develop a new manufacturing facility in Europe. The US-based company plans to build a 7,500m2 new plant at a new industrial park in Judenburg, Austria to serve the European market, as well as the emerging markets in Asia and the Middle East. "Despite the current economic climate, we felt this expansion in our production capability was vital," said Rockmore executive vice president Pejman Eghdami. "This new facility demonstrates our

Delivery of a new Sandvik DP1500i drilling rig is helping Carrieres de la Vallee Heureuse to improve production at its Pas de Calais quarry Famous for its Marquise Marble, the hard carboniferous limestone found in the Rinxent area of the Pas de Calais in France has been quarried since the Middle Ages.

Investment in new drilling rigs and breakers has helped one Vietnamese quarry avoid closure. ABE reports. Gaining permission to extract rock by blasting is getting more and more challenging and the situation is no different in Vietnam. The government has applied a blanket ban on blasting in any quarry close to its cities, but there is still a growing demand for aggregates in these urban areas. The Bien Hoa Building Materials Production and Construction Company (BBCC) quarry is located 32km east of Ho Chi Mi

Advances in technology are helping to deliver both improved hole straightness and BLAST detonations for better fragmentation. No matter how carefully the load and haul functions and crushing and screening processes have been designed, if the feed stock does not match the design, any efficiencies are lost. Improvements in drilling techniques and blasting technology are helping to deliver benefits that mean the actual blast matches the design more closely than ever before.

Natural sand is a limited resource but one Norwegian quarry operator is offering an alternative with industrial sand, which it claims is better than the real thing. Claire Symes visited Velde Pukk to find out more. If you arrive at Norway's Stavanger Airport right now, you may think you are on a building site, rather than an airport but the work marks a step change in the approach to concrete in Norway. Part of the work includes construction of a 27,000m2 car park by precast manufacturer and contractor Spen