Thinking big but staying small
Welsh stone company sings the praises of Liebherr machines at its site in the Swansea Valley
A FATHER and son team producing some of the finest architectural stone in the world is relying on Liebherr equipment for extraction and processing duties. Gwrhyd Specialist Stone are found high up in the Swansea Valley overlooking the Black Mountains of Wales and it is here that Michael Walton and son Charles have spent the last decade assembling a fleet of specialist equipment to help develop the site to its full potential.
Together, they are responsible for the day-to-day running of a quarry employing 22 people to produce just 5,000 tonnes a year; quarries of similar size could output up to 500,000 tonnes a year but volume at Gwrhyd is small because of the specialist nature of their stone.
Liebherr have been an important supplier of equipment since the beginning. The operation still uses its original L 510 Stereo wheel loader which, over the years, has been joined by an L 509 Tele wheel loader and an R 926 G8 excavator, the latter now replaced by a slightly larger R 930 G8. ‘The R 926 did exactly what we wanted it to do and served us well over the past few years,’ noted Charles Walton.
Working alongside another manufacturer’s used 14-tonne excavator, used for loading the site’s two-deck screen, the new R 930 has been a hit with regular operator Jamie Evans, who came off the 45-tonne machine originally used at the site.
‘It was an ideal machine at the top of the quarry but as space got a little tighter, it proved to be too big,’ recalled Mr Evans. ‘The R 926 was also great and a massive step up in comfort over the older model and it’s now the same for the R 930. It’s a really comfortable machine, still has bags of power but hardly uses fuel. We don’t do a great deal of fine work here – we’re usually flat-out moving the stone – but we’re still averaging just over 16 litres/h.’
Boom and stick options for the R 930 G8 model include standard mono boom, a straight demolition boom, and a variable-arm version, with Gwrhyd specifying the standard configuration which combines a 6.2m boom and 3.2m stick, topped off with a Miller Groundbreaking coupler for fast changes between buckets and a breaker. Regular use of the breaker means the excavator has a dedicated drain line back to the hydraulic oil tank to ensure the oil is returned to lower its temperature as quickly as possible.
The R 930 G8 weighs just under 31 tonnes in its LC undercarriage version and has a 7-litre Liebherr D 934 engine that develops 245hp at 1,800 rev/min. The engine is designed to deliver peak torque at low rev/min, achieving 1,255Nm at just 1,350 rev/min. That lowers internal and external noise levels and reduces fuel consumption significantly.
The excavator is used for a variety of duties, from front-line extraction to a current major programme of site development. Any spare time is spent moving a large pile of material left over from the previous owner’s operations. That gets taken to the screener and a proportion is then cut into smaller blocks to increase the percentage of usable material being quarried.
‘We are hoping to gain planning permission in the future to process the remaining waste material into a variety of crushed and screened aggregates to further increase the percentage of materials we are able to win from the site,’ said Charles Walton.
With more than 100 years of reserves, Gwrhyd are set to continue producing their distinctive stone for building projects of the future – as well as providing work for future generations of Liebherr equipment.
