After several years of design, build and more recently testing stages, Swinderby quarry’s new processing plant is now being handed over to the local operation team to begin business as usual operations – a momentous end to a long and challenging project.

The impressive new plant will enable the quarry to process significantly higher quantities of high-quality sand and gravel, with the potential to produce up to 700,000 tonnes a year, nearly doubling production.

The successful delivery of a project of this scale was mainly due to the outstanding collaboration between the Cemex Operational site and Engineering team, along with contractor CDE, the company who designed and built the new plant.

The Engineering team included Senior Project Manager, David Hakes, and from the end of 2022 Engineering Project Manager, Jamie Ewing, who is CDM (Construction Design and Management) site Manager for the construction of the new processing plant on the Swinderby project. Vanessa’s team included Gary Pell, Assistant Quarry Manager, Neil Robinson, Supervisor, Alistair Longdon, Supervisor, John Feast, Plant Operative, Tomasz Bielanski, Plant Operative, Mark Bell, Plant Operative and Darren Clay, Plant Operative.

This strong relationship began back in 2021 when the first phase of the redevelopment began with the installation of 1,600m of field conveyor by Canning Conveyors. Quarry Manager, Vanessa Smithson, and her team continued to operate the existing plant, processing high quality sand and gravel for both internal Readymix plants and external customers, many of which collect their own materials. Meanwhile they were working very closely with Jamie Ewing to help manage the new site construction. One of Vanessa’s first priorities was to re-organise the site to accommodate the variety of contractors and the increased traffic, with Health and Safety and Wellbeing a top priority. This was discussed by the team resulting in an improved traffic management plan being implemented and demarcation between both sites being fully defined, benefiting both the day-to-day operations of the quarry and the installation of the new plant. The whole redevelopment has been completed with zero injuries.

With Jamie’s in-depth knowledge of the project, and being based onsite at Swinderby, together with Vanessa, they build a very strong working relationship built on excellent communication, expertise and agility.  Each day Jamie and Vanessa would discuss items such as traffic management, building management and staffing. Together they were able to make quick decisions to solve problems and overcome all the challenges that the huge operation created daily. These included lack of available contractors, bad weather and issues in the supply chain causing delays in phases of the construction, plus redesigning elements of the plant to improve safety and efficiency.

Vanessa and her team have now taken over the daily operations of the new plant from CDE, running it themselves, while still making improvements and dealing with small issues. Jamie is now at the beginning phase of dismantling the old processing plant, with many parts being repurposed at other Cemex sites.

The successful collaboration between Operations, Engineering and the Contractors have resulted in the delivery of a multimillion state-of-the-art processing flagship plant that the teams are very proud of. In a recent visit from Operational and Commercial colleagues from Cemex Spain, the local team were able to showcase the new plant’s advanced ergonomic and ease-of-maintenance design features, along with the digital monitoring sensors and health and safety features.

Well done and congratulations to everyone involved in this flagship plant, which will be producing quality sand and gravel for their customers for many years to come.

In the photos: First photo Jamie Ewing and Vanessa Smithson

Second photo L to R: John Feast, Alistair Longdon, David Hakes, Jamie Ewing and Vanessa Smithson