Thoughtful design sets up Canadian producer for years to come

Having more than tripled production and barge loadout capacities since the recent completion of its new plant, the Mainland Construction Materials Cox Station Quarry is well-positioned to meet market demand now – and far into the future.

The 400-acre granite rock facility, located near Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford, British Columbia, operates along the Fraser River, where its material is shipped via barges to strategically-located distribution depots.

Completely automated, the new plant replaces an older, antiquated processing facility that had averaged only 600 metric tph. Today, the plant exceeds 2,100 metric tph and will allow the Cox Station Quarry to provide its regional markets with up to 5 million metric tons of high-quality aggregate products each year.

Mainland had envisioned a new plant upgrade more than a decade ago, but the plan was placed on hold during a market downturn. After Denver-based Summit Materials acquired Mainland in 2014, capital improvement talks over the next several years ultimately led to the go-ahead on the new plant.

“After coming up with a plant concept, our management teams at Summit and Mainland wanted a turnkey design-build plant construction approach at the site that could be completed in a tighter timeframe,” says Kevin Spenst, president of Mainland Construction Materials.

After careful consideration, the contract was awarded to Superior Industries.

Turnkey design-build plant construction

Headquartered in Morris, Minnesota, Superior Industries is a provider of aggregate processing and handling solutions. Its construction management division was commissioned as a single-source supplier to drive the workflow on the new plant, from concept to completion.

“Superior is a leader in the industry and was the best choice for the project,” says Spenst, who adds that the second phase of the project – the barge loadout system – was awarded to Superior as a result of their performance on the processing plant. “Their engineering team took our initial concept and made it work. From all parts of the U.S. and all the way to Vancouver, all the components were delivered on time; all the pieces and parts fit well together; and all the details and logistics were handled by Superior’s project management teams.”

With a large reserve exceeding 120 million metric tons, the new plant has positioned the operation for the future.

“And our new barge loadout system delivers a huge competitive advantage in the market,” Spenst says.

Engineered for efficiency

During the new plant construction, the operation ran its old plant in its original location.

“There was a lot of juggling to make it all work,” says Colin Herbert, Mainland aggregate equipment manager, who joined the company in 1996.

Herbert coordinated with Superior onsite project manager Josh Hoelscher throughout the design-build process.

“Josh is a doer,” says Herbert, adding that things ran quite smoothly for a project of this size. “He’s hands-on and he makes it happen.”

A partial list of Superior’s responsibilities included the survey; site prep; concrete work; all electrical (up to two miles underground); transformers; power poles; water and air lines; water systems and pumps; all millwrights, welders and electricians; dust suppression systems; automation systems; all steel structures, cables and mounting of the equipment.

According to Herbert, the plant is comprised of five crushers, five screen decks and 42 conveyors. At the primary crushing circuit is a large 54-in. x 74-in. gyratory crusher that provides a live surge of more than 15,000 metric tons of material to ensure consistent feed to the rest of the plant.

“This is a hard rock granite quarry with mine-duty equipment,” Herbert says. “Since the compressive strength of our material feed is relatively hard and contains such a high rate of silica content, we worked with Superior to beef up our chutes, transfer points and all wear areas.”

As for automation systems, the new plant takes the operation from analog to digital. Both the secondary and tertiary cones were delivered with IO-link IFM sensors.

“Digitized sensors display information in real-time, right down to the millisecond, which allows us to streamline operations and run far more efficiently,” Herbert says.

Best maintenance practices, Herbert adds, are also key to the operation’s greater efficiency.

Additionally, two Superior P400 Patriot cone crushers comprise the tertiary crushing circuit for the processing of asphalt-specification products.

“We chose them for their ability to produce a better particle shape, but the big advantage is their configuration for easy access to maintenance and liner changes,” Herbert says. “The maintenance team loves them because they can do a liner change in less than four hours. That’s such a big thing because we have five crushers, and given the silica content, we have to do liner changes in under 300 hours.

“During the busy season, we could be doing liner changes in the same week, making it imperative that we do them as quickly as possible,” he adds

As for the barge loadout system, the prior system was older and limited in tonnage capacity, barge berth space and speed of loading. With the new system, the barge berth was lengthened to allow more barges to be loaded simultaneously.

Superior TeleStacker conveyors, which are telescoping radial stackers, are used to safely trim the barge loads, allowing higher-volume loads while eliminating material segregation.

“We have tripled our loadout capacities, while cutting our loading time by half,” Herbert says.

Logistics and teamwork

According to Jason Adams, Superior’s vice president of construction management, managing a complete plant construction project in a mountainous location outside of the United States is a unique and exciting logistics challenge.

Because the plant is located on the backside of a mountain, getting 150 truckloads of equipment and steel structures to the site when needed was a logistics challenge of its own, Adams says.

But the success of the project was due to a collaboration between many parties.

“The teamwork involved allowed us to complete both phases of the project within the desired timeframes,” Adams says.

The project broke ground in December 2017, with the processing plant completed in December 2018 and the barge loadout system completed in May 2019.

“The plant is doing a remarkable job for us,” Herbert says. “Superior really stepped up to the plate right off the bat, and they always remained one step ahead. Any time we had a question, they had an answer. Any time there was a problem, they had a solution. Bottom line, they had the willingness and the flexibility to give us just what we wanted.”

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Carol Wasson is a veteran freelance writer for the aggregate and construction equipment industries.