A new CDE wet processing plant has reportedly helped to double production at D’Arcy Sands’ Wexford site.
The firm, owned by father and son duo Anthony and Tony D’Arcy, produces building materials and sports sands for a range of venues, including sports pitches and golf courses.
Recently, the company secured a contract to supply its sands to the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
Prior to the CDE plant being commissioned, D’Arcy Sands had been using a tracked rinser and traditional bucket wheel system for sand classification and dewatering. An upgrade of the existing bucket wheel system was required to tackle the loss of valuable materials to ponds and excess moisture in the final products.
Water availability was another challenge, to the extent that the business was transporting its sand more than nine miles to a separate site with sufficient water supply.
Tony D’Arcy said, “The plant we had been operating was powered by a diesel hydraulic system, so there existed the potential for spillages that could contaminate our much sought-after sports sands. We work with world-class venues and arenas, so we wanted to take preventative measures and put in place a system that would remove the risk of product being rejected or returned.”
Garry Stewart, area business development manager at CDE added, “Our engineers worked closely with Tony and the team at D’Arcy Sands throughout the design and commissioning process to better understand what the company wanted to achieve by upgrading its plant and to outline any key site challenges they were facing. Completed over several site visits and through a series of collaborative design workshops, we designed a bespoke plant specific to D’Arcy Sands to support the company to scale its operations and extract maximum value from the material being processed.”
After consideration of the site, CDE presented a custom-built plant featuring the electric-powered M2500 E4 washing plant with integrated hopper, feed conveyor and twin-deck Infinity P2-75 screen. The plant includes an integrated water management system comprising the A200 AquaCycle thickener, FlocStation poly dosing plant and AquaStore water tank.
CDE explained that its M2500 modular washing plant combines feeding, screening, sand washing and stockpiling into one ‘compact and mobile’ chassis. The E4 model allows D’Arcy Sands to produce up to four commercial grade washed sand and aggregate products simultaneously. The entire system requires under 20m3 of water per hour to operate.
Raw feed material, primarily Wexford sports sand with a small portion of gravel, is being fed into the new plant at a rate of up to 80 tonnes per hour.
“Output is up by over 100%,” Tony D’Arcy said. “We’re now processing up to 80 tonnes per hour of feed and extracting over 40 tonnes of our quality graded sports sands. Greater control of fines separation using cyclone technology, which is a new development for our operation, has added more value to our products and is driving significant demand. The feedback we have been getting from our customers and in particular the greens keepers who use our sand daily has been excellent with numerous positive comments on the quality, percolation and workability of the sand. Importantly for us, the new system allows us to wash material at our Blackwater site when previously we had to transport it off-site, almost ten miles, to a location with a better water supply.
“Producing commercial grade sports sands has always been the primary focus for D’Arcy Sands, but the new plant is producing new revenue streams for us through the production of higher quality aggregates and opening up new markets.”
