Terratec Basalt adds plant economy with Germany’s first Lokotrack LT220D

“We estimate that we’ll gain a 25-30% savings by gradually changing our quarry from stationary to mobile. The resulting 1.0 – 1.5 EUR per metric ton savings is really significant for us,” comments Karl-Werner Bierbrauer, Managing Director and Owner of Terratec Basalt GmbH.

“Our savings are based on cutting out half the transportation of the blasted rock to processing. Instead of bringing rocks to the old top-on-the-hill stationary plant, we only need to transport the materials to the nearby Lokotrack mobile process,” he adds.

Old quarry gets a new life

Started in 1962, A. Caspar Basaltwerk in Ettringen, a Bavarian city west of Munich, has been known for its high-quality aggregates, produced from basalt and volcanic lava. The family company was bought in early 2017 by Terratec Basalt.

“For us, buying the quarry means extending our present business of renting mobile crushing plants and screens and transporting. For the time being, we will run the quarry both stationary and mobile; we hope to be able to close the stationary quarry in two years,” Karl-Werner Bierbrauer says.

Today, Bierbrauer & Sohn GmbH, a sister company of Terratec Basalt, is known for having the biggest Lokotrack fleet in Germany: the company today leases a fleet of 12 Lokotracks.

Two tracked crushers and a mobile screen

The mobile process that has already started will include three track-mounted Metso units; a Lokotrack® LT106 jaw plant, an ST2.4 mobile screen and an LT220D cone plant with a screen. The LT220D is the first one being used in Germany.

Blasted basalt and lava is fed first to the LT106 primary jaw plant that feeds the materials to the ST2.4 screen. The screen separates 80-120 mm oversized from 0-80 mm sizes that are taken to the LT220D cone-screen plant. The main end products from the LT220D are 0-2 mm, 3-8 mm and 8-16 mm.

The high-quality end products are used in various applications in the region: in road construction and as isolation and base materials at construction sites.

From quantity to quality

Terratec Basalt will eventually lower production from the current 300,000 tons per year to some 150,000 tons. The hourly capacity with the mobile Lokotrack process will be 150-250 tons.

“We will concentrate on quality products rather than bulk, and we believe we’ll achieve better profitability with this kind of operating strategy. At the end of the day, the value of accurately classified macadam will be much higher.”