PBI Group has 50 Caterpillar machines working across its five Polish quarries and concrete business. The large family-owned and managed multi-industry group’s close working relationship with Cat Polish dealer Bergerat Monnoyeur Poland dates back to 1997, with more machines set to be added to PBI Group’s already extensive Cat fleet in 2025. Aggregates Business visited PBI Group’s largest quarry and growing southeast Poland base in Sandomierz to learn more about the highly successful partnership.
The PBI Group’s trading numbers are very impressive. Of its €250 million annual revenues, €100 million comes from its quarrying business. Given the Polish national and regional governments’ massive investment in improving transport connectivity in recent years, nearly the same level of revenue is now generated by the group’s roads and infrastructure division. PBI Group also runs businesses in mining services, residential and civil construction, asphalt production, logistics, green energy, fertilisers, and sulphurs.
At PBI Group’s Sandomierz offices, before visiting the group’s flagship Budy quarry, Aggregates Business learns that the site’s already large office accommodation and laboratory/research and development centre are being significantly expanded as part of the ambitious group’s growth strategy.
“Public contracts for road construction are only awarded if the bidding company can offer a 10-year warranty. The roads must be of very good quality, so we need to invest in laboratories and materials research and development to analyse our aggregate, asphalt and concrete mixtures. We invest 1% of our annual revenues in R&D,” said PBI Group president Przemysław Bokwa. “We have planning approval pending for the site expansion and hope to start building in the first half of 2025.”
PBI Group comprises 16 companies, employing a combined 1,300 people. The group operates five quarries: Budy (dolomite and limestone), Janczyce and Wszachów (dolomite) Wymysłow (limestone), and Lipowica (sandstone). They extract 14 million tonnes of aggregate annually, up from nine million tonnes in 2014. Earlier this year, PBI Group closed its Jurkowice and Piskrzyn quarries at the end of their aggregate reserves.
PBI Group also runs concrete production plants in Wymysłów (next to the quarry), Kraśnik, Lublin, Stalowa Wola, generating a total annual production of 350,000m³. Group asphalt plants at PBI’s Budy, Oleszyce, Kraśnik, and Garwolin sites produce 500,000 tonnes of asphalt.
Speaking about the history of PBI Group, including its quarrying business, Marcin Siatrak, a group technical director, said: “We have photos showing the first excavation at Jurkowice quarry just after the Second World War. You can see rail carts being pushed by workers. After the war, REK (Rejon Eksploatacji Kamienia), a state-owned quarrying company, was established, and the scale of its sites grew. The state-owned company was changed into a private company (Kopalnie Dolomitu SA w Sandomierzu (Kopalnie), now a PBI Group company) in the 1990s, and the aggregates business became its foundation for further growth. In 2008, local infrastructure companies were purchased and integrated (into Kopalnie). In 2012, a new (Kopalnie) business, Polska Siarka, started extracting natural sulphur. The PBI Group brand was created in 2020, containing all the (Kopalnie) companies.”
Focusing on PBI Group’s quarrying and concrete businesses and their 50-strong Caterpillar machine fleet, Siatrak said: “It is the largest number of machines from all our OEM suppliers. We have 34 wheeled loaders, six excavators, five dozers, three articulated dump trucks, one rigid dump truck, and one telehandler. We have Cat Service Agreements (CSA) and Cat Extended Protection Plans (EPP) for each machine. You get a 10,000-hour warranty on each machine, plus 15,000 hours on servicing.”
Bokwa said: “Caterpillar machines offer great reliability. Aftersales support is also so important to us. Marcin and his team work well with Bergerat Monnoyeur (Poland). This kept our machines going after the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was difficult to get replacement parts. We work our quarrying machines 21 hours a day, five days a week, so we need dedicated maintenance and servicing support.”
In 1997, PBI Group bought its first Cat machine, a 950F wheeled loader dedicated to final product loading. Its next Cat loaders were from the H series. This year alone, PBI Group acquired three 980 and three 980 XE wheeled loaders and two D7 medium dozers from Bergerat Monnoyeur Poland (BM Poland), Caterpillar’s Polish dealer. The three Cat 980 XE are expected to deliver eye-catching fuel savings.
“The difference in fuel consumption between the 980 and 980 XE after just two months of using the 980 XE is over two litres less per hour. After further operators’ training, we want to achieve a three-and-a-half to four-litre standard difference,” said Jarosław Wojtanowski, BM Poland’s quarry and aggregate market manager. “I have been asked [by PBI Group] to prepare a site assessment for each of the five quarries to identify more productivity and efficiency gains.”
“We want to decrease our fixed costs, so we are looking to invest in larger machines,“ said Siatrak. “There is a growing problem around the availability of machine operators, so we need to increase the capacity of the machines in use. This will also help us improve our sustainability. Machines like the Cat 980 XE, which release less emissions as they use less fuel, also help with that.”
Arriving at Budy quarry, the constant stream of on-highway aggregate delivery trucks entering and leaving the site immediately strikes you. Siatrak said up to 1,300 trucks a day enter and leave Budy. The five-million-tonnes-a-year quarry’s round-the-clock Monday-to-Friday operation includes three hours of meal breaks and shift changes. During periods of peak demand, the quarry also operates on Saturdays, presenting overtime opportunities for the site’s 120 workers. Around 20% of Budy’s annual aggregate output is used by PBI Group businesses.
Budy quarry’s impressive Cat machine line-up comprises 10 x Cat 980, two x Cat 972 and one x Cat 980 XE wheeled loader, one x Cat 385 and one x Cat 365 excavator, one x Cat M320F wheeled excavator, one x Cat D7 dozer, three x 745 articulated dump trucks (ADTs), one x Cat 772 rigid dump truck (RDT), and one x Cat H120 hydraulic hammer. Siatrak notes that each of Budy’s Cat 980 wheeled loader operators loads up to 140 lorries during a seven-hour shift.
PBI Group uses a combination of Cat VisionLink and its own TMS site management system to record and analyse the productivity and efficiency of its Caterpillar and other OEM loading and hauling machines. The system also allows for optimised maintenance and servicing times.
“The TMS system allows us to compare the performance of different OEM [original equipment manufacturer] machines doing the same tasks,“ said Siatrak. “Modern machines are moving computers with many sensors and control units. On the one hand, it is very useful because we have a lot of information from them that can be gathered and analysed remotely. On the other hand, in difficult quarry conditions, it causes additional problems.”
A 20-minute drive from PBI Group’s Sandomierz base, Budy quarry has four aggregate production lines, two of which have been significantly upgraded in the past two years, with another new crusher and screener to be introduced soon. The production lines include several Metso and Sandvik jaw and cone crushers, vertical shaft impactors, Wail cone crushers, and Haver & Boecker screens. Heavily clay-ridden aggregate from Budy’s upper quarry benches is put through a CDE wash plant. After removing the overburden layer, blasting to release fresh aggregate material from the quarry face occurs at least once a day, often twice daily.
Final aggregate product sizes are mostly 0-2mm, 0-4mm, 2-8mm, 8-11mm, 8-16mm, 11-16mm, 16-25mm, 0-32mm, and 0-63mm. “Our customers mainly work in road construction, concrete production, and agriculture [fertilisers]. Presently, the demand from the market is quite huge, and it looks like it will remain that way going into next year,“ said Siatrak. “Deliveries are all done with trucks. A railway siding and connection to the rail system would be a great advantage.
“We have plenty of aggregate reserves, covered by concession and in our ownership, across our five quarries. This will meet our needs over the next few years, and we can increase our production capacity further. Generally, the [quarry extraction] planning process is very long and requires a lot of different permissions and documents from many different authorities. It may take up to 10 years. Fortunately, we have enough reserves available for extraction, so we can calmly look to the future.“
Przemysław Bokwa said that PBI Group spent €5 million installing solar power at Budy quarry this summer. It currently generates three megawatts (MW) to power five hours of site production daily. “We want to be fully independent in our energy use, so plan to make our solar power coverage bigger. We already have one of the best installations of its kind in Europe.”
Speaking about PBI Group’s approach to site restoration and worker health and safety, Siatrack said: “We return our finished quarries, like Piskrzyn, and Jurkowice, to nature. We use overburden from the nearest operating quarry to help with this.
“As I mentioned before, our processing plants are being modernised not only to increase capacity but also to fulfil the highest standards in health and safety. Additional space has been created for service and maintenance, and access to machines is much easier. New electrical installation and control systems also make work easier. An additional aspect that is very important for us is training our staff and subcontractors. They work in hazardous conditions, so they need to be very well prepared, equipped and aware of any possible threat.”
Buddy quarry manager Jarosław Banaś accompanied us on our tour of the site. He remembers the arrival of PBI Group’s first Cat 950F wheeled loader in the 1990s. “I thought it was very good. I have a very good opinion on all our Caterpillar machines. Their reliability and the service support you get with them has led us to have many of them.“
“We have a Bergerat Monnoyeur [Poland] service support technician who visits our quarries constantly. He is always in touch on the phone and really cares about supporting us and trying to solve any problems,“ said Siatrak. “The most common problems are a faulty DPF [diesel particulate filter] or an engine or gearbox issue linked to the need to preserve fuel economy and maximise machine uptime. Every machine at every quarry has these issues over time, especially those that have worked over 20,000 hours.
“Our machine operators view Caterpillar machines as model machines. They say they are easy to operate. I like to visit all our quarries and always ask our machine operators how they find the machines. Their opinion is very important to us and is one of the factors we consider when purchasing a new machine.”
