Bordonaro quarry

Located within the municipality of the Sicilian capital of Palermo close to the suburb of Borsellino, the quarry produces stone for aggregate base courses or for asphalt or concrete mixes, and conglomerates.

Salvatore Schiera, technical manager at the quarry and highly-experienced explosives expert, tells how “we carry out stepwise quarrying: blasting for primary demolition and using the breakers for secondary breaking, i.e. reducing the size of the blocks to get them ready for crushing”.

The quarry has belonged to the Bordonaro family since the early 1960s, and is well-equipped, having two wheeled loaders, two crawler excavators, two dumpers, five quarry vehicles, as well as various Indeco breakers. Pietro Bordonaro, managing director and head of the firm, explains “The nature of the excavator and the type of rock we are dealing with on a daily basis on this face – a dolostone, a carbonate of calcium and magnesium that is extremely hard, but not at all abrasive – meant we went for a HP 4000“.

“It’s the fifth Indeco breaker we’ve bought in the last six years. – continues Bordonaro – We first went for one on the advice of a fellow quarryman, who persuaded us to borrow his own breaker and try it out properly in our quarry: we were immediately struck by its great resistance and the outstanding productivity on this rock… add to that our strong sense of Italian-ness and the excellent rapport that grew up with Francesco Raco (Indeco area manager for Sicily), and it will be clear why.

We decided to go for these breakers in a big way”. “Our faith in this company,” concludes Bordonaro “means we are now thinking in terms of taking out a programmed maintenance contract, along the lines of one we had a few years back with Maia for our earth-moving equipment. That should enable us to get the benefit of programmed maintenance by an Indecotechnician every 500 hours, as well as a complete service every 1000, and that should protect us against any problems in the field or troublesome machine downtimes”.