Sand on demand
A New England producer/contractor uses a portable setup
to produce manufactured sand from granite material.
BY CARL EMIGH
There is virtually no sand for construction left in coastal Rhode Island and
Connecticut. One company, Cherenzia Excavation, is manufacturing #4
minus spec sand at 130 tons per hour
from 3/8-, 3/4-, 1/2- and 1 1/2-in. granite to fill
the need, using a Terex Pegson 1000SR Max-trak cone crusher equipped with an Autosand
head and an integral screenbox.
“The law of supply and demand has never
been more evident than it is here in Rhode
Island and Connecticut for construction
sand,” said Joseph Cherenzia, vice president
and project manager. “Our problem has
been how to supply spec sand for our own
construction use and to sell on the market.
We supply three concrete plants and three
asphalt plants. We also produce a variety of
other stone products for construction and
road building with the 1000SR and a 26x44
Terex Pegson XR400 jaw plant.”
“With a burgeoning demand and virtually no supply, #4 minus sand had become an
extremely valuable commodity for anyone
who can supply it,” Cherenzia said. “That’s
what we were wrestling with in late 2007.
We’ve been utilizing fines from blasting and
crushing to supply part of our construction
sand for the past 20 years. But it’s a drop in
the bucket compared to the total need. So we
went looking for help.”
The company wanted to use a cone crusher
rather than other equipment because of the
wear factor with hard granite.
Equipment decision
Brian Brennan, vice president of operations
for Cherenzia Excavation, said Geoff Morrow
of Powerscreen Connecticut came in here and
told us we could get at least 100 tons per hour
of #4 minus sand with their 1000SR cone with
Autosand. We gave it a try and were amazed to
