Production of certified aggregates at the Rauscheröd sand and gravel plant
In addition, the family-owned company rounds off the range of services for its customers with the divisions of bulk goods, container and heavy load transport, earthworks and civil engineering as well as demolition services with qualified recycling of valuable and residual materials. The vehicle fleet of the company, which is managed by fourth-generation managing director Ralf Alex, is correspondingly versatile: more than 20 trucks and low-loaders ensure regional and supra-regional transport services, the earth-moving fleet comprises a good 40 machines, whose large equipment is flexibly used in construction measures, in the company’s own excavation and material handling as well as in landfilling. A total of 50 employees, most of whom have been with the company for many years, are employed in the equally well interlocking areas of the company, which also operates a large vehicle and machine workshop at the Rauscheröd site in addition to its own factory production control.
The company’s excavator fleet currently includes more than 20 machines with operating weights ranging from 1.7 to 37 t. Here, too, managing director Ralf Alex relies on long-term relationships and a proven cooperation: With the exception of a few machines, all tracked excavators including attachments have come from the Neukirchen-based Kobelco dealer EMB Baumaschinen for over 20 years. “All in all, we have been able to place more than 30 machines of various sizes in Rauscheröd over the years,” reports EMB customer consultant Markéta Duchkova.
Strengthening in quarrying
Kobelco and EMB also came into play in the year of the company’s 60th anniversary in Rauscheröd, which was celebrated at the beginning of October 2022 on a two-day city trip with the entire workforce. In the summer, the Rauscheröd sand and gravel plant took delivery of their new Kobelco SK350NLC-11, currently the largest excavator in the fleet. In addition to the Kobelco SK300NLC (32.0 t, 200 kW), which was already delivered in 2020, the 213 kW 37-t excavator is primarily used for quarrying, but thanks to standard hammer and crusher hydraulics, mechanical quick coupler and compact transport dimensions (width: 2990 mm), it also switches to other tasks in the company at short notice.
The mining area in Rauscheröd covers a total of about 50 ha – currently dry mining is carried out with parallel backfilling over four levels on about 7 ha of open pit area. With wall heights of up to approx. 5 m, the existing material is extracted directly by excavator and loaded onto 35-ton dump trucks. Equipped with a 3.30 m standard stick and 2.3 m³ backhoe bucket, the Kobelco SK350NLC offers a working height of around 13 m with a maximum outreach of just under 12 m. The powerful hydraulics with power boost function ensure high breakaway and ripping forces (max. 244 kN/180 kN) and allow productive loosening and loading without frequent relocation.
Like all Kobelco excavators of the latest generation, the Kobelco SK350NLC-11 has been optimised in terms of ease of operation and maintenance. In addition to the clearly arranged cab in the ergonomic “Perfomance-X-Design” and even more easily accessible daily maintenance points, this includes in particular the intelligent machine control: preset working modes facilitate operation, e.g. automatically adjust the hydraulic power to changing attachments or ensure particularly fuel-efficient machine use. This is also proven by the Kobelco SK350NLC-11 at the Rauscheröd sand and gravel plant: after a good 6 months of operation, the average consumption in typical mining operations is 18.3 l/h.
