Monthly Tech-Tip | No tracking! No ads! |
This has served the company for almost 50 years. The grinding plant, which has also served 50 years, has been able to process these clays to 20 and 42 mesh. While this quarry has been a key advantage for the company and coarsely ground bodies still sell well, the demand for smoother, more plastic and whiter bodies has seen a steady trend to the use of more and more imported 200 mesh powders (eg. clays, feldspar, silica) to make bodies. The star clay in the quarry is 3B, it is smooth and contains natural feldspar. Minings are typically done now just to get it. But because it is near the bottom (there are 6 layers plus overburden), others continue to bloat the inventory of unneeded materials (some of these piles are 30+ years old). On the next mining, the cost of stockpiling the overlying layers vs discarding them will have to be rationalized.
Most of these piles (especially the ball clay) could be sold on the open market if 200 mesh grinding was possible. The most serious problem is the amount of overburden that must be removed. Perhaps even more serious, since other clays are not needed, the 3B has to bear the entire cost of the mining. Now that better, more accessible and easier to mine clays further east have been found, the way forward is looking much better. In fact, it looks so promising (with testing of course) that it could be time to begin reclaiming this site.
Buy me a coffee and we can talk