P&Q Profile: Sandvik’s Barry Murphy

P&Q visited Sandvik’s Barry Murphy during the opening day of AGG1 Aggregates Academy & Expo in Nashville, Tennessee. Murphy offered details about Sandvik’s new wheeled crushing plant. He also touched on the supply chain and shared his impression of AGG1.

What can you tell us about the new wheeled crushing plant Sandvik is launching?

This is the newest plant we’ve introduced to the U.S. It’s manufactured in the U.S. It’s the Sandvik UK373 (pictured below). It’s a closed-circuit cone plant with our market-leading CH440 cone crusher on a chassis with a three-deck horizontal screen.

This would be for gravel or aggregates for concrete or asphalt. It would be very good in gravel pits. The cone will accept like an 8 1/2-in. feed size, and the screen then will sort out whatever aggregate sizes are needed. All the oversize rock that comes through the screen will go straight back into the cone so it gets re-crushed, and it comes back around again to the screen.

Once you’re in position to run, you can either hook up to a generator or to land power coming into the site. You will do that through our panel, which comes with the machine. Basically, it’s plug-and-play ready. Once you get into a site and you have the power there to run the plant electrically, you’re ready to go once you plug into that panel. Everything on the machine, when it’s in functional mode for running, is run electrically.

Our customers asked for fuel efficiency with the electric over fuel – especially right now with the fuel prices. They’re looking to run on the grid. It makes sense. It’s a very fuel-efficient way of producing rock and for a low cost per ton. That’s what your customer is looking for.

We continue to hear about issues within the supply chain. What’s the latest you’re seeing?

Lead times are stretching out on getting new product. We’re not any different on that, as we do have trouble finding componentry in the market right now. But we do have a pretty good handle on it at this point.

We have a lot of stock in our warehouses, so we are looking to be able to feed off of those. Because we are all around the world, we have so many different places we can pull from.

I think everybody at the start of COVID shut off a lot of supply chains and now tried to open them all up at the same time. But it’s great to see the industry so strong right now here in the U.S., and I’m delighted to be a part of it.

What are thoughts on AGG1?

I’ve gone to a lot of shows over the years with Sandvik, and I honestly feel there’s been a bigger buzz about this than I’ve seen in years. Everybody wanted to get back out and get to a show. [The infrastructure bill] basically brings a lot of people here to see what the right equipment is for the buzz that’s going on right now in the market.

Featured photo: P&Q Staff