Quarry process and its development

In quarrying, the main activities are:

1. Drilling
2. Blasting
3. Boulder handling
4. Crushing & screening
5. Material loading
6. Hauling

Quarry processes can be either stationary or mobile, as shown in Figure 1.

These are the main determiners of quarrying costs, and thus understanding these costs, how to inl uence them directly, and how they im- pact each other is the key to successful quarry development.

It is important to have a basic understanding of this process because it is the ‘world’ where those in quarry work live and do business. In order to have a good overall picture, it is useful to look at the typical cost structure of quarry opera- tions. These are shown in Figure 2, which shows two cases: a stationary one and a case where the primary section is mobile = inpit crushing, which in many cases can yield remarkable ben- ei ts because material hauling costs can be re- duced considerably.