Features

Compared to the bleak days of seven years ago, the economic outlook for the the UK and Ireland are now among the best in Europe.

Good news stories from companies in the aggregates, construction and related industries are not hard to find as new opportunities arise.
Businessman Craig Jackson has invested over €670,000 on new machines to enable the business to grow in a new direction, with a Hyundai R220LC-9A crawler excavator; Hyundai HL770-9 wheeled loader alongside a Powerscreen Premiertrak 300R mobile

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has released a regulatory framework for the use of drones and calls for new regulation to be proposed by December 2015.
Building on the European Commission’s new standards to regulate the operation of drones, which were released last year, the regulatory framework could place Europe at the forefront of drone innovation. Simon Trahair-Davies from Stephens Scown LLP explains more.
Drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or remotely piloted aircraft sy

Weir Minerals Europe’s Tony G. Locke talks to Patrick Smith about the company’s robust targets to grow its business after investing heavily in its European market reach, with attractive emerging geographic markets such as Turkey, North Africa and Kazakhstan offering great potential for the firm’s high-quality range of equipment for the global mining and mineral processing sectors.

The market town of Todmorden made news when residents decided to grow fruit and vegetables in public places, asking people to

Lafarge’s flagship Pitt River Quarry in British Columbia, Canada, is part of a Lafarge North America network, the largest diversified supplier of construction materials in Canada and the United States.

The facility in Pitt Meadows, 50km west of Vancouver, a big market for the granite quarry, is near the banks of the Pitt River. It ships out 1.5-2 million tonnes of aggregate/year, loading river barges or trucks with the prized product.
Reserves at the quarry are expected to last for the next 50 years. Wh

Metso jaw crushers are proving a valuable asset to one major German quarry. Guy Woodford reports.

Schotterwerk Clemens’ Stentenberg quarry in Germany has been in operation over 50 years. Its long history carries a lot of valuable insight. For example, the quarry has one basic rule for ordering crushers: Only go for crushers that can be operated at 100% efficiency from day one without any rebuilds.

“After using three different sized Metso Nordberg C series jaw crushers in our quarry, nobody needs to c

Chechnya is starting to offer big aggregate production possibilities thanks to a mixture of private and federal and local government investment, writes Eugene Gerden.

Situated in the southernmost part of Eastern Europe, the Chechen Republic (Chechnya) is expected to become a key region for Russian aggregates production during the next few years, according to the recently announced plans of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

An Estonian quarry’s decision to switch to Caterpillar excavators for rock breaking and loading and hauling applications is said to have led to big fuel efficiency gains and healthier profitability, as Guy Woodford discovers.

With a large residential housing area, a city ring road, electric power lines and gas pipelines less than 100 metres from PTT’s Väo quarry in Tallinn, Estonia, the past 20 years has seen the company using hammers rather than blasting in order to gain the vast majority of its limesto

A dozen Volvo machines are hard at work in Ghana helping the vertically integrated Justmoh Group in its mining, construction and road building activities, writes Guy Woodford.

Meaning ‘Warrior King’ in Mande, Ghana is a sovereign state bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, Togo in the east and the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean in the south. With a population of 25 million and a land mass covering 239,000km², Ghana is rich in natural resources, especially gold, oil and co

The South African quarry industry’s main adversary to its development is illegal mining, but commercial quarry operators deem the establishment of borrow pits as equally damaging, writes Munesu Shoko. Around 103 million tonnes/year of aggregate are produced in South Africa, based on 2012/2013 returns and industry estimates. The country’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) says this is a significant increase on the 81 million tonnes/year reported between 2010 and 2011.