A comprehensive Matec washing and screening solution has created a new revenue stream for an Austrian company, while boosting its sustainability
Kogler Naturstein is a longstanding second-generation family building materials business based in Sankt Urban, a town in the southern Austria state of Carinthia. The company’s headquarters, which includes all its mining, processing and sales facilities, is located in its 24-hectare-plus quarry, where blue-green Carat, an exceptionally decorative diabase stone, is extracted. The quality of the blue-green Carat has made Kogler Naturstein one of Europe’s leading players in the decorative stone industry.
The company, which produces up to 350,000 tonnes of material a year, needed to recover the waste material from their large blue-green Carat stone extraction. The cutting and crushing of these stones produce a huge amount of varied secondary crushed stone, gravel, and sand grain sizes. Unfortunately, this excess material had become an economic headache for the company as it was forced to spend time, space and money storing and disposing of it.
A solution to this problem could have been found with a simple screening and washing system, but the resulting sludge – a mixture of clay, silt and water – would have created even more difficult and expensive waste to manage.
When searching for a more complete solution, Matec’s offering caught the eye of Werner Kogler, Kogler Naturstein’s owner. After discussions with the Massa-Carrara, Tuscany-based company, Kogler felt that only Matec could provide an all-in-one plant suitable for treating both his company’s high-quality decorative diabase stone material and the sludge resulting from their washing.
“We received offers from various companies around wastewater treatment solutions. However, it was only at the end of that process that we learned about Matec. We went to visit them in December 2019, and it was clear that their solution must be added to our quarry, as we were convinced that it was the only way to allow our business to work at its best.
“In Matec, we have found an excellent and competent partner. That was something I already understood from the initial management of this project and presentations during the coordination of our order. We signed the order in December 2019, and the plant was due to be delivered in March 2020. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, everything got delayed.
“Now, we are here with a plant that has been installed to perfection by Matec technicians. I can recommend Matec to others as a company that demonstrates the utmost competence and satisfies customer needs, despite difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a solution that will give us the right products, while solving the problems of the future.”
Matec’s all-in-one solution for Kogler Naturstein features an Aggretec 150 screening and washing unit, a two-deck Screentec VS 180-502 inclined vibrating screen, and a Sandtec DS 150-300 hydrocyclone-based washing unit, said to guarantee the recovery of 95% of fines over 75 microns and ensure highly accurate elimination of excess fines. The solution also includes Matec’s 250,000-litre vertical deep cone thickener tank, a Doson system supplying automatic flocculant dosage, and a Terrae filter press with 1300×1300/60 plates and HPT 16Bar high-pressure technology. The turnkey Matec plant solution recovers up to 95% of water, while also producing dry cakes containing less than 15% moisture.
Through the installation, Matec is said to have satisfied all Kogler Naturstein’s needs, providing a complete wet screening system combined with a turnkey water treatment plant.
“With this plant, recycled materials have become resources,” said Matteo Goich, Matec’s CEO, co-founder, and commercial director.
