VOYAGER II - THE NEW BGC QUARRY

August 2010: BGC Quarries commenced commissioning of its new quarry operations called Voyager II, located at the Lakes. Western Australia.

BGC Quarries has been operating the original Voyager Lakes Quarry since 1990, extracting and crushing Granite for concrete aggregate, paving blocks, asphalt, road seal, road base and general fill. The new Voyager II Quarry is located at The Lakes area, 55kms east of the Perth CBD.

Paul Berkhout, BGC Quarry Manager and Colin Greenhow, BGC Quarry foreman proposed and designed the new Voyager II Quarry back in 2006 and received the first clearing permit in 2008.

The removal of the overburden and clearing of the new pit commenced in 2008, and full construction of the Voyager II quarry crushing plant commenced in November 2009.

According to Paul Berkhout, BGC quarry manager, we proposed the new quarry to Len Buckeridge, BGC's proprietor, who approved the idea which has now become reality.

"BGC is a great company to work for and under Len Buckeridge's leadership, BGC has become the biggest house builder in Western Australia," said Paul.

"The quarry has a 30km disadvantage in transport distance and this disadvantage has been the driving force behind the quarries need, to work efficiently.

"The primary loading machine in the quarry is the Komatsu PC1250-7 and PC1100-6 excavators. In addition we have three, WA600-6's and one WA600-3 wheel loader - which can be loading road trucks at the same time,in peak conditions," he said.

A day sales can potentially be 9,000 tonnes in peak periods making total production at the old quarry site in excess of 1 million tonnes sales per annum plus extraction. With the growing demand for crushed aggregates in the metropolitan and country areas of Western Australia, we saw the need to build a new plant that could be competitive, and keep up with growing demand. Stage 1 of the new plant will see it produce in excess of600 tonnes per hour of finished product.

"The reason we use Komatsu loaders to load our sales products, is that they are quick on the ground and they are also a great face loader basically, Komatsu equipment have played a key role in the efficiencies of the old quarry at The Lakes, and will definitely be an integral part of the efficiency and growth of our new Voyager II quarry operations," Paul stated.