Canteras Industriales S.L.
Canteras Industriales is a mining Spanish company founded in 1972 with 10 employees established in the well-known Cerro de Montevive, at the intersection of the municipalities of Las Gabias, Alhendín and La Malahá, in the province of Granada. The company exploits the mineral deposits of Montevive. The Aurora Mine is the most important and biggest deposit of celestite (natural strontium sulfate) in Europe and the world. The first work of extraction of celestite began in 1940 and the activity continues today. The Montevive mining activity began with small escalation of underground exploitations between 1941 and 1944 to supply the national consumption. About 20 years later, Canteras Industriales S.L. began to export due to the growing demand from German, Chinese, Japanese, and USA companies. The company had more than 50 workers and after hand sorting, manual separation, and crushing of the fragments of higher law production, the mineral was transported to the port of Motril. At the beginning of this century, they started exporting to the Republic of China. In 2007, the production was interrupted, and the activity returned in 2011. The current aim of the company is to establish the necessary means for a concentration and pre-concentration of low-grade ore with adequate separation to increase the output. Concentration methods depend on the mineral type, the main phase present in the matrix, the granulometry of materials, and the qualities of different ores.
Currently, the main activity at this site is the extraction of ore from the deposit by blasting, primary screening of the higher-grade ore, primary crushing of the «All-in-One» material, and subsequent size grading. With R8 we aim to achieve the implementation of a complete mineral processing circuit to increase the yield, recovery, and efficiency of the beneficiation systems, along with the reduction of waste disposal. In addition, to carry out the development of a complete processing plant for the recovery and valorization of celestite tailings, as well as the improvement of the current sludge and slurry treatment processes, to increase water recovery and reduce solids discharge. Finally, a mining waste valorization study will be carried out. Canteras Industriales will be the leader of WP5, being the responsible partner for D5.1-D5.4 and it will be the leader of task T5.1 Pilot implementation at the Canteras Industriales site with partners CTM and AMP.
