New Holland Construction and Benetti Macchine have teamed up to create a backhoe loader designed specifically for use within the marble quarry industry.
The companies combined a New Holland B100C and one of Benetti’s CST 965 chain cutters. The machine has been developed to improve safety and productivity at marble quarries.
“This machine was created to meet the needs of our customers, who know better than anyone how to improve their businesses,” explained Federico Benetti, owner of Benetti Macchine.
“What they were missing until now, was a machine that could operate autonomously in the quarry, and cut blocks of marble in situ. To accommodate this requirement, we explored the idea of combining cutting equipment with a backhoe loader,” he added.
Benetti says that he chose to partner with New Holland because of the “performance and known reliability” of their backhoe loaders. The prototype underwent several months of vigorous testing in the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy.
Technicians chose to fit the backhoe with a chain as an alternative to a conventional diamond wire cutting machine. Diamond wire cutting machines cannot operate autonomously; they have to be positioned on tracks that run next to the blocks that are to be cut. A backhoe loader, meanwhile, is able to align itself with the blocks autonomously, without the need for tracks. Its developers contend that this arrangement leads to both improved safety and reduced job times.
Following the machine’s official launch at Italy’s Marmomacc trade show, the first unit was sold to Portuguese mining company, Grupo Frazao, at the beginning of 2014. The prototype, meanwhile, was tested and subsequently purchased by a different Portuguese firm, Solancis.
“We were convinced by the backhoe loader because of its great versatility and the reduced overheads,” commented Samuel Costa Delgardo, managing director of the natural stone quarrying company, Solancis.
“It is currently working in the Evora di Alcobaca quarry in the district of Leira, 80km north of Lisbon. It is cutting marble blocks up to 3m high, and can move around the inside of the quarry without wires or tracks. Thanks to this machine, productivity has increased considerably,” he concluded.
