The Derbyshire Peak District is renowned for its high-quality limestone, which is used to produce a huge array of products from aggregates to make-up. The area contains some of the largest quarries in the UK, which tend to use their in-house resources for extracting the product. However, some use the services of specialist contractors to undertake secondary quarrying work, typically contract crushing, or to develop a specific area of a site.

It was at one such location that we met Banner Contracts, one of the UK’s foremost contract crushing companies. Already undertaking a sizeable crushing operation on another part of the huge site, they were also asked to reprofile a blasted face, from which the surplus material was to be crushed in situ. This project involved handling of over 10,000 tonnes of material a week. Banner’s contracts manager Phil Molyneaux explained, “We have worked with this quarrying company for many years on several contract crushing projects. The material here is very good and clean, with minimal contaminants such as clay.”

FLEET FOCUS

Sister company Banner Equipment is one of the largest SANY machinery dealers in the UK, covering the north of England from the borders through to Yorkshire. As a result, the majority of Banner Contracts’ front-line excavator fleet are SANYs. For this project they developed one of their 50-tonne SY500H models to load the crusher, supported by a smaller SY215 excavator equipped with a hydraulic breaker to handle the oversized material.

Phil commented, “We have been using SANY excavators in our quarrying operations since becoming a dealer. They have been welcomed by our operators and have turned out to be very reliable, fuel efficient and productive machines, with ample digging power.”

Also deployed to this project was one of the latest excavators to be added to the contracting fleet, a SANY SY390H. This 40-tonne class, Cummins-powered excavator boasts a digging force of 233kN. Located at the top of the face equipped with a Keen bucket, it was working through the blasted material with ease, gradually levelling the area into a safe and stable slope.

Banner Contracts runs a fleet of over 60 mobile crushers and screeners, which provide a lot of flexibility. They range from a simple stand-alone operation with an excavator or loading shovel, to a large-scale crushing and screening operation using dozens of pieces of kit.

Another Banner Group company has recently become the UK dealer for the long-established Austrian-made range of SBM mobile jaw and impact crushers. They are dual-fuel machines, operating either from an onboard diesel generating set, or from a suitable external electricity supply.

Phil continued, “We have a mixed fleet of crushing and screening equipment in the fleet. We always have running costs in our thoughts have been using several hybrid products with great success over the years. It wasn’t until we had the chance to use an electric SBM that we found what we think is the ideal blend of productivity and fuel economy.”

AT THE FACE

Sat on a bench above the crusher’s apron, the SANY SY500H steadily filled the hopper, allowing the material to gradually flow into the crusher. The machine is capable of handling material up to 800mm, so the excavator’s operator was careful to place to one side any oversized rock. This is one of several SY500H models on the Banner Contracts fleet, which have proved to be ideal machines to load a crusher and carry out other quarrying duties. The 53-tonne excavators are powered by 12-litre Cummins engines and this example was equipped with a 3cu.m heavy-duty with rock bucket.

The smallest excavator on site, the 22-tonne SY215, was used solely for secondary breaking duties. Despite the best efforts of the blasting team, oversize material more than often appears in the mix. Rather than leaving it for rock armour projects, it was decoded in this case to beak it up, then put it through the crusher.

Between the material thrown down by the SY390H working up high and the material picked out of the blast by the SY500H, the machine was kept extremely busy. 

With the SBM crusher constantly churning out a stream of material, it was up to a Doosan DL580 wheeled loader to keep on top of each growing pile. Moving quickly around the discharge conveyors, the loader filled a pair of Bell B40D articulated dump trucks deployed to the project, for the trip to the stockpile. With this section of works almost completed, the team will move to another part of the quarry to continue their operations there.

Thanks to Earthmovers magazine for the quotations used in this SANY in Action article and to Paul Argent of RPA Photography for the excellent photos.