The US is one of the global quarrying industry’s largest markets for equipment and materials, and the last year has seen key manufacturers invest heavily to secure a foothold in the region.
Despite being the third-most populous city in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson, and 36th-most populous in the whole country, Mesa is where one of the most recognised companies in global quarrying has its new training facility and expanded repair centre.
For Metso president of North and Central America, Giuseppe Campanelli, the reasoning is simple.
“Nearly five years ago, during the merger of Metso and Outotec, it became evident that the southwestern USA was underserved,” he said.
“Our customers, striving to optimise their assets and manage costs, highlighted the need for reliable alternatives to equipment replacement, especially due to lengthy lead times.”
Once the company identified the southwest as a target area, it began putting together a foundation to support the region’s customers with improved services. The cornerstone of this approach was announced in 2023: a new training centre to the company’s existing Mesa facility and an expansion to the service centre.
Metso’s investment of around €14 million enabled the company to increase its repair shop area by 60 per cent and support customers in crushing, screening, grinding, slurry handling and more.
The investment will add an extra 650m2 to the shop, as well as a new shipping and receiving area and a dedicated 650m2 training centre. The breakroom will be extended to double the original’s size, and a nearly 5m CNC vertical turning lathe with live tooling, a CNC horizontal boring mill and a submerged arc welding set-up will also be added.
The announcement marked the second expansion of the Mesa service centre since its opening in 2015. Metso’s commitment to the southwest heartland includes one of its largest warehouse operations globally, and the company is investing in additional energy efficiency improvements at the Mesa site.
“Our full-time employee count has nearly tripled since 2020, and we have nearly doubled the capacity and capabilities of our Mesa repair centre,” Campanelli said.
“However, attracting skilled individuals has been a significant challenge. To ensure long-term sustainability, we decided to establish a world-class training facility in the southwest to develop our workforce.”
The challenge of recruiting new workers to replace an ageing workforce is not a unique problem to Metso, with examples being raised in the industry from Australia to the US, from quarry operators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Infrastructure Australia, for example, noted in its 2023 Market Capacity Report that the country needed to increase its overall infrastructure workforce by 127 per cent to meet the demand across associated industries.
To that end, Metso has the Metso Academy, which has grown to support several training locations worldwide, but the Mesa Training Centre is new ground for the global OEM.
According to Metso, the training facility will feature modern simulators, digital training tools, classrooms and practical learning areas. Attendees can participate in tailored training programmes to increase their technical knowledge of parts, equipment and plants.
The new centre will be the first stand-alone training facility for Metso anywhere in the world. The company broke ground on the Metso Academy Training Centre in mid-December 2024, which senior manager for technical training, Nichole Pritchard, labelled “the beginning of a vision”.
“Training is no longer a nice-to-have or an afterthought. Today, it’s a must for our own company’s employees as well as our partners and customers,” she said.
“It is the beginning of a vision: a vision to empower the next generation of mining professionals, to enhance safety and efficiency in our operations, and to strengthen the backbone of an industry that fuels our modern world.”
Born in the USA
Mesa is part of a growing trend of OEMs expanding their presence within the North American region.
Although there are few similarities between Mesa, Arizona, and Morris, Minnesota, the two cities have become centrepieces for OEMs Metso and Superior Industries, respectively.
Superior Industries has had its headquarters in Morris since it was founded in 1972. The company has become almost synonymous with the town, as its HQ and facilities have delivered bulk processing equipment for more than five decades.
Superior expanded its footprint in the city by opening a new manufacturing facility dedicated to cone crushers and jaw crushers. Opened with a symbolic ribbon-cutting ceremony, the new facility will support Superior’s dealer network and producers in the North American market.
The facility features an integrated hydraulics assembly area, an inline test zone, and an expanded parts warehouse.
While the company’s other crush facility in Belen, New Mexico, will continue to manufacture impact crushers, including Vertical Shaft Impact (VSI) and Horizontal Shaft Impact (HSI) crushers, the addition expands Superior’s global manufacturing presence, which includes sites in South America and Asia.
“This new facility means more opportunities for everyone connected to Superior, from our dealers and producers to our team members and local communities,” Superior Industries’ president, Jason Adams, said.
“With more capacity and smoother operations, we’re able to stay true to our purpose of serving others by providing products that help our partners succeed.”
Education is key
Regardless of the market in which quarry operators exist, being up to date on the latest methods of operation is crucial to success.
When it comes to screening, one of the most important parts of aggregate production, and that remains true in regards to operating a vibrating screen.
Many within the industry would be familiar with horizontal and inclined screens as the two main types of dry-screening applications. The two types are defined by the latter’s use of gravity to help with the material flow and conveyance.
According to McLanahan’s director of sales, Donal McNichol, the key factors to consider when choosing a screen include maximum tonnes per hour, gradiation of the feed material, type and weight of the material, desired size of separation, the material’s surface moisture, any special operation requirements.
By considering these factors, McNicholl said, businesses would be able to select the right screen for the job.
“Because they don’t rely on gravity to move the material forward, horizontal screens require higher energy and a larger stroke,” he said.
“These types of screens are ideal for low-profile applications where height requirements are limited, which makes them a great choice for portable plants. In stationary plants, they are often used as tertiary or finishing screens. Finer screening applications can greatly benefit from this type of screen.
“Known for their efficiency and reliability, horizontal screens offer more accurate particle sizing. The high G-forces required to move the material ensure screen plugging is virtually eliminated, allowing for more continuous open area.
“Inclined screens are the most popular for aggregate applications. Since gravity helps to move the material, this type of screen requires low energy and low stroke.”
The modern vibrating screen comes in a wide range of set-ups that are often tailored to the operation. Manufacturers like McLanahan can tailor screens based on basic capacity, incline, deck, oversize, slots, shape, weight of material, and open area.
“Vibratory screens can be configured with one, two, three or four decks. Some fine screening operations can even have as many as eight screening decks. Three decks are pretty common in the aggregate industry, but the number of screen decks depends on the number of products the site needs to make,” McNicholl said.
“In a typical application where multiple products are being made, the top deck of the screen makes the coarse cut, the middle deck makes a middle cut and the bottom deck make the fine cut.
“Each screen deck is covered with screen media containing the openings for the particles to pass through. Screen media comes in many different forms, and the type of screen media plays an important role in screening efficiency.”
With this in mind, choosing the right screen media is important for any quarrying operation.
Screen media is defined by the amount of open area or the amount of opening in the screen. It is important to understand the need to balance both the wear life and efficiency of screen media.
McNicholl said common types of screen media include woven wire, polyurethane, rubber and hybrid.
“Woven wire cloth is the most consistent, versatile performing media product. It averages 50–70 per cent open surface area in most configurations and provides the most flexibility for operations that need to make frequent media change-outs due to varying product specifications. Overall screening efficiency is good with this type of media,” he said. “Polyurethane is better suited for wet or wash screens and dry applications with highly abrasive materials. It provides 30–40 per cent less open area than wire cloth; however, polyurethane offers extended wear life over wire media.
“Rubber media is used for heavier, coarser materials that can damage standard wire screens. It is most often used for dry applications or abrasive materials. Rubber media has less openings than wire cloth, and therefore less throughput; however, they last much longer than wire screens.
“Hybrid media combines wire screen with reinforced rubber or urethane strips to fit screen supports. It is highly popular in dry screening applications with high moisture materials and a high proportion of fines. This type of media works to eliminate blinding and pegging, which ends the need to stop production to clean the screen. It provides more open area than polyurethane and lasts longer than woven wire.”
McNicholl said manufacturers like McLanahan can use their team’s expertise to help quarry businesses choose the right screen and screen media for them.
Major market
Due to its demand, America will always remain among the top handful of key markets in the industry. However, the US market is tough to crack, especially when operators face challenging conditions and need equipment to perform day after day.
Ridgeline Excavation faced such conditions during a recent job in Big Sky, Montana, building roads for a new residential area.
The task was simple enough: Ridgeline Excavation needed to crush blasted granite and quartzite into 75–100mm material. The challenge was to do this in an environment with an altitude of nearly 2500m and shifting weather conditions.
Access to the site was difficult. There was limited working space and workers had to contend with rain, snow and sleet. These conditions dampened the material containing sticky fines and clays, which could have made processing difficult. With an arduous task ahead, Ridgeline trusted Kleemann’s mobile jaw crusher MOBICAT MC 110i EVO2 to operate as a standalone machine.
“The flexibility and ability to easily move the plant to different locations in the quarry is a decisive advantage,” Ridgeline Excavation site manager, Lloyd Spanners, said. “Thanks to its mobility, the plant is very easy to move around the site. It also copes very well with the very sticky material we process here.”
The MOBICAT MC 110i EVO2’s double-deck pre-screen with a slotted grate enabled Ridgeline to process the feed material effectively. The operators set a desired final grain size, and the machine screened the material so that corresponding grains bypassed the crushing chamber. This enabled greater throughput while lessening the impact on the crushing chamber.
“The pre-screen, with its ergonomic slotted grate, is really helpful in this application due to the wet, sticky material,” Spanners said. “On top of that, the consumption values are really manageable at approximately 19 litres of diesel per hour. The machine enables us to work efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner.” AB
