Welsh farmers diversify into quarrying
Many livestock farmers in Wales have been hit hard by the well documented farming crisis, and are therefore investigating alternative uses for their land.
One such case is brothers Llew and Dylan Rees who farm 6,000 sheep and 400 cattle on 1,000 acres of land in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, land which also contains some of the highest-quality sand and gravel reserves in Wales. They set up Pantgwyn Quarry in 1990 with a mobile screen and a dewatering wheel and have since expanded into a fully up-to-date sand plant with a fleet of lorries supplying major civil engineering works, builders merchants, concrete companies and local customers throughout west Wales.
A recent major plant investment, following extensive trails on site, has been a Svedala Barmac 6100 VSI crusher bought to produce coarse sand to meet market demands. In a continuing expansion programme, the operation is to be virtually doubled in size with the installation of new screens and a new feed hopper which will be lined with Svedala Trellex rubber lining, as will the feed trays into the water barrel discharge chutes from the screen.
Pantgwyn Quarry was the first sand and gravel quarry in Wales to achieve ISO EN 9001 Quality Assurance management, and the concrete batching plant they acquired over 18 months ago has been similarly accredited.
Elsewhere in Wales, farmers Richard and Jennifer Powell, based near Newquay in Dyfed, moved out of sheep and cattle farming to develop a profitable sand and gravel operation at their Crug-yr-Eryr Quarry. Last year they bought: a 16in x 10in Svedala jaw crusher to reduce +50mm gravel off the top reject screen deck to -40mm; Svedala Trellex polyurethane screen mats for their E12 Niagara screen; and inner and outer rubber trommel mats for their 2m washing barrel. They also have a 75/100 Svedala Orion slurry pump for pumping clean water to the plant from the settling ponds.
