Aggregate Industry Case Study: LafargeHolcim Group: Aggregate Industries, Salford Asphalt Plant

“Today I was very fortunate to have a meeting with Original AVG. I'm extremely excited to see the results of this product, impressed wasn't the word.”

Dean Copping – Asphalt Plant Manager Salford – Aggregate Industries

About the customer

Aggregate Industries is a proud member of the LafargeHolcim Group, which is the leading global building materials and solutions company with around 70,000 employees in over 80 countries.

Aggregate Industries produce and supply an array of construction materials including everything from aggregates, asphalt, ready-mix concrete and precast concrete products. Additionally, they produce, import and supply construction materials, export aggregates and offer national road surfacing and contracting services. They operate 200 sites and employ around 3,700 people.

Project Background

Although the Salford Asphalt Plant has refrigerant dryers, the site was still experiencing moisture build up in the compressed air lines at various points across the site. This is a common occurrence for asphalt plants due to the distance the compressed air has to travel and the ambient temperature changes across the plant.

A particularly problematic area for the site was at the bitumen discharge point. Moisture in the compressed air lines was causing the valves to stick which in turn meant the rams would not function correctly. When this problem occurs, it would affect the weighing systems accuracy and cause either too much or too little bitumen going into the asphalt mix. In order to rectify this problem, the team at the site would have to replace the moisture damaged valve. They were having to change around 30 valves annually, costing in the region of £95 to replace each time.

Additionally, the site was experiencing issues caused by moisture in the compressed air lines across all hours, and when this problem struck in the night, it meant that emergency breakdown call outs would have to be made, costing the site double the normal rate.

Since installing Expel units across the site, we are very pleased to report that the site no longer suffers from issues caused by moisture in the compressed air lines and has achieved truly remarkable results.

Why did the site choose Expel?

Salford Asphalt Plant Manager Dean Copping installed several Expel units in the most problematic areas at the site, including by the valves at the bitumen discharge point and was truly astonished to discover that after having had Expel installed for several months, he had not experienced ANY problems with moisture in the compressed air lines, saving his site substantial sums of money, reducing downtime, maintenance and boosting efficiency.

As the Salford Asphalt Plant has greatly benefitted from Expel, Salford Asphalt Plant Manager Dean Copping has since shared all this information with his colleagues and has ignited interest and shared his results with many other Aggregate Industries sites so they too can consider Expel as an ideal upgrade to ensure sites no longer suffer common issues caused by liquid water, oil emulsion fluids and solid particulates in compressed air lines.

Thanks to Dean Copping sharing his results, we went on to upgrade several asphalt sites in the Northwest where Expel yet again proved itself to be an essential tool in increasing site efficiency and eradicating problems associated with compressed air contaminates like liquid water, oil emulsion fluids and solid particulates. Following the impact of Expel in this area, this further snowballed, and we are now working with procurement to potentially scale the Expel project across all sites in the UK and Europe. Mr Copping and Assistant Asphalt Manager Jamie Donnellan is working with us to showcase the cost savings for Salford Asphalt Plant so it can be shared with all other Lafargeholcim sites.