In the foothills of Mount Etna, the Sicilian volcano that can erupt with a plume of smoke and dust, and cause a tremor of the earth’s crust, a unique South African-made machine is creating an impression crushing old lava flows.
The TwisterTrac AC210 mobile vertical shaft impact (VSI) Crusher, the first diesel hydraulically-driven tracked VSI crusher in the world, has made its first appearance in Italy in a quarry in the Sicilian port town of Catania, where it grinds volcanic lava from Mount Etna to produce high quality building sand for construction on the rocky island.
The sale of the first TwisterTrac AC210 VSI crusher into Italy by Jet Park-based Pilot Crushtec represents another breakthrough for the South African manufacturer in Europe. Already TwisterTrac crushers are in operation in Ireland, England, Spain, Bulgaria, and now also in France and Italy.
The sale of the TwisterTrac was to Finlay Italiana, a dealer near Genoa that represents Pilot Crushtec.
The export sales manager for Pilot Crushtec, Mr Paul Chappel, said further sales are expected in Italy as the TwisterTrac is delivering high tonnages of product at low cost.
“The crusher is doing an excellent job manufacturing a very high quality sand the likes of which have not previously been seen. Now the quarry requires even greater throughput and this could lead to more than one sale,” he said.
“Quarries often build up huge stockpiles of unsellable materials, in this case an 8 to 15mm product, whilst they often have a demand for good quality sand for construction. In Sicily, being the rocky island that it is, the demand for sand is at a premium. There they are reducing the 8mm to 15mm unsellable material down to minus 5mm sand from lava rock being quarried at the base of Mount Etna.
The TwisterTrac with a throughput capacity of up to 250t/hr, was conceived and 100% in-house designed by Pilot Crushtec’s engineers. It is a tracked, remote controlled plant consisting of a variable speed belt feeder, a Twister VSI crusher, and a discharge conveyor, powered by a CAT C13 317kW diesel hydraulic power pack, all mounted on a heavy duty track undercarriage with dual speed configuration, and 25 degree gradability.
A major feature of the TwisterTrac, is that the entire machine is controlled via a PLC, which automates all the crusher’s features and facilitates ongoing monitoring of all aspects of the crusher’s operation.
In France, a plant dealer representing Pilot Crushtec, Lheureux & Cie, based outside Paris, has bought the first TwisterTrac AC210 mobile VSI crusher to be sold by Pilot Crushtec into that country. The machine has been hired out by Lheureux & Cie and is currently working in a quarry application making sand from waste aggregate near the French capital.
“For Pilot Crushtec these sales represent opportunities for expansion in these countries. The first nut to crack is the hardest, and now that we have equipment operating in those countries we have no doubt that further sales can be expected,” Mr Chappel concluded.