A Europe-wide hunt for the best mobile crushing plant has resulted in a Metso LT120 Lokotrack beginning production as the primary crusher at a Zanow-run greenfield quarry in the South East Queensland town of Kalbar.
The Zanow group of companies is a 50-year-old, family owned earthmoving and construction materials company managed by Brad and Darren Zanow.
It’s a widely diversified business that provides a wide range of services from block clearing and road building to the production, distribution and delivery of a range of sand, gravel, soil and hard rock products including concrete aggregates, asphalt aggregates, sealing aggregates and road base and rock products.
After acquiring the Kalbar quarry 38km southwest of Ipswich, Brad took himself off to Europe on a quest to find a proven hard rock primary crusher that was robust, reliable and had a long service life, that could handle the intended feed size and rock hardness, and that could provide the operational flexibility to follow the quarry face or be shifted to other project sites.
After spending time in Spain, Finland, Ireland and England, Brad settled on a Metso machine, saying the equipment had a robust build, a high degree of functionality and appeared well suited for the harsh conditions and climate of Australia.
Cementing his decision, Brad says, is the fact that, in most of the long-term hard-rock crushing applications he viewed, the Metso crushers constantly exceeded 25,000 hours of service.
Once back in Australia Brad made contact with Justin Guilfoyle, an account manager at Metso Equipment’s Australian distributor Tutt Bryant Equipment, and decided on the Metso LT120 Lokotrack. The main features that cemented the deal were the unit’s power, its high production capacity and the fact that it didn’t need separation or decommissioning for transportation.
Material is fed on to the hydraulically driven LT120’s feeder by excavator or wheel loader. A two-stage scalping section removes the fines which can be guided to main conveyor or side conveyor.
The output material size is controlled by the setting of the Nordberg C120 crusher.
The Metso LT120 Lokotrack is powered by a 415-horsepower (310kW) Cat C13 engine and weighs 62 tonnes.
“Metso Lokotracks are easily maintained, easy to operate through the IC units and are provided with good back up and tech support,” Zanow’s Concrete and Quarries senior site executive Paul Gourchenok says.
He adds that the LT120 has provided the company with very high availability levels.
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