Features

Use of a new mobile crushing system is making extraction of the final reserves from a hard rock quarry more economically viable Mountain View Quarry has been successfully worked by the Barro Group to create aggregates for the concrete market from the high quality basalt deposits near Drysdale in Victoria, Australia for 25 years.

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.

New pump technology is increasing flow rates, reaching greater heads and improving solids handling. ABE looks at the benefits for quarries. Managing drainage is an essential task in many European quarries as operators try to maximise reserves by extending below groundwater or coping with natural springs in the formation. These units not only allow for drier working conditions but also protect expensive equipment, so performance and reliability are key assets.

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

Maintaining tyres is an essential part of minimising operating costs as well as improving machine service life. The importance of tyre maintenance to maximise service life was put under the spotlight a few years ago with the global shortage of earthmover tyres. Now with more production and the economic slowdown, the shortage may be over but the need to reduce costs remains.

Exports, the backbone of the German economy, have been hit hard by the recession, and in the quarrying industry there is a mixture of pessimism and optimism Germany is the largest construction market in Europe, with over half of all investments in the country flowing into such projects.

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.

The European Commission has adopted new regulations to toughen up the control of explosives for civil use. Robert Camp looks at the implications for quarry operators Just days after the Madrid train bombings in 2004 in which 191 people were killed, the European Council published its Declaration on Combating Terrorism, which called for terrorist organisations and groups to be "starved of the components of their trade".

Despite efforts, the EU's target to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010 (the International Year of Biodiversity) will not be reached. The UEPG outlines its plans. Thanks to its close relationship with nature and landscape, the aggregates industry has been aware of the importance of biodiversity for a long time, and has been very active in protecting it.

Mobile crushing and screening customers are looking to get the most from both new and existing equipment fleets. Claire Symes reports. The concept of mobile machinery is in its second phase - the first was the move to mobile machinery over the last 10 to 15 years as it was recognised that there was a place in the market for it and customers saw the benefit," said Powerscreen global sales director Pat Brian. "This second major phase is about scale with mobile machinery pushing into the static business with m