An IRP 1250 rotating pulverizer pulls a ceramics factory apart

Demolition work on the Tognana factory in Monopoli, close to Bari, began towards the end of January 2007, and is scheduled to finish by June 2007, when the area once occupied by this once great ceramics factory will be landscaped to make way for a brand new shopping centre.

The work is being carried out by Intini Angelo srl, a company which specialises in the earth-moving, construction and roadworks businesses.

The premises cover an area of 56,000 square metres, with an estimated 52,000 cubic metres of material to demolish, which will then need to be separated, before disposing of the rubble. The work involves demolishing ground-floor warehouses with reinforced concrete structures, lined with prefab concrete panelling and large glass lighting units. There is also a huge basement area whose supporting structure is made up of reinforced concrete units up to 100 cm thick. The company decided on a rotating pulverizer because its versatility enables all the primary demolition to be done by one excavator, as well as separating out the steel rods.

They chose an IRP 1250, mounted on a Hitachi “ZAXIS 460” weighing around 46 tons. A second excavator mounted with a handling sorting grab and/or HP 12000 – HP 9000 hydraulic breakers is being used on site for transporting rubble.

This is the first time that Intini have used a pulverizer. They always used to use hydraulic breakers, but following recent changes to the regulations which now require building materials to be separated out before disposal, pulverizers have become a must. And using a pulverizer has also made the job much quicker.