Beating the crisis (part two)
The survival of the Portuguese road-building industry – see previous blog – is also good news for other sectors of the country’s construction industry. For example, almost all of the aggregates for the IC3 project are being supplied by Agrepor’s (Aggregates Portugal) 35-year-old, 25-hectare Condeixa-a-Nova quarry.
The aggregates arm of the Cimpor group produces one million tones per annum in this high-quality limestone quarry: half of which is used for crushing and processing into aggregates; and the other half is delivered to one of the group’s cement factories.
To achieve this level of production, 2,000 tonnes of materials are blasted out every other day. The company’s four-year-old Hitachi ZX670LCH-3 loads the rocks on to rigid dump trucks before they are transported to the site’s production facilities.
Agrepor has been able to continue selling materials within the group through the recession, as well as developing new markets. Although there is not the same level of business as before, Mota-Engil will be its biggest customer over the next three years.
Posted by Paul Directors on 31 Oct 2011 at 15:16