A total of four million tonnes of granite chips is needed for the concrete from which the 89 tunnel elements will be cast.
The granite comes from the Jelsa quarry near Stavanger in Norway, which is Europe’s largest quarry.
The world’s oldest rocks
It is the raw materials group Mibau Stema Group that has been awarded the contract to deliver the four million tonnes of shards to FLC, which has the mining rights over the quarry through the subsidiary Norsk Stein A/S.
In the Norwegian mountains you will find some of the world’s oldest rocks. At the same time, the rock types in the mountains are known as aggregate materials of the highest quality. And that is also needed for an immersion tunnel, which should last over 100 years at the bottom of the Fehmarn Belt.
Must have equal quality
The shards need to be of the same quality. There must be traceability throughout where the products come from. So you can’t just mix the products together from different quarries. It is important that the raw materials come from the same resource, Claus Boisen points out, CEO of Mibau Stema Group.
Every year, the quarry in Jelsafjord produces more than 13 million tonnes of aggregates for the European market.
Space for 1,000,000 tonnes
Via an underground conveyor, the aggregate materials are loaded directly into self-unloaders of up to 70,000 tonnes with an output of 3,000 tonnes per hour.
The storage capacity has been expanded to 1,000,000 tonnes, and a newly built quay facility gives the quarry more efficient logistics with minimal waiting times and optimized costs.
Can extract 300 million tons
Precisely the large production capacity in Jelsa, the high quality allowance and a well-developed and reliable supply network of their own ships and port terminals were also the reasons why Mibau Stema Group was awarded the large contract.
The total deposit in the quarry is estimated to be 500 million tonnes, of which Norsk Stein has obtained extraction rights for 300 million tonnes for the time being.
