Liebherr L 556 User Manual
Page 28
28 // Quarrying
“It is the only hard-stone quarry in the Provence-Alpes-Côte
d’Azur region,” explains Dominique Seux, director of the Grands
Caous quarry, which is part of the Eiffage Group. The materials
produced here, thanks to the presence of porphyry, achieve a
value of 57 in the PSV test (Polished Stone Value). A value of 56
is the minimum required for the surface course of roadways. Half
of the production is used for road construction. Of the other half,
35 % is used for producing ready-mixed concrete and 15 % is
used as coarse gravel in civil engineering or as reinforcement
blocks in marine and river engineering.
Porphyry has been extracted from the quarries close to the sea
in the Massif de l’Estérel, where the Grands Caous quarry is
located, for many years. This is where the Romans extracted the
stones used to build the Via Aurelia from Rome to Narbonne.
Within the immediate vicinity, the Massif de l’Estérel has supplied
some of the gravel for the PLM (Paris-Lyon-Marseille) railway and
paving stones for the famous Paris to Roubaix road.
In the course of the twentieth century, the quarries in these hills
were gradually abandoned. However, in 1959, a civil engineering
contractor opened the Grands Caous quarry. This was a deposit
for the blue porphyry known as “Estérellite” with feldspar points
and pyrite inclusions. At the time it made a significant contribution
to the construction of the A8 autoroute, which links Aix-en-
Provence to the Côte d’Azur. In 1989, the quarry was sold to
GSM. In 1998 it was taken over by Appia, part of the Eiffage
Group. In 2012, a license was granted to extract up to
881,849 tons per year until 2042.
R 964 C SME crawler excavator in the
“Carrière des Grands Caous” Quarry.
On account of its extensive experience, construction contractor Eiffage Travaux Publics has procured a new
R 964 C SME for its porphyry quarry at Saint-Raphaël. The crawler excavator is the heart of the machine fleet at the
“Grands Caous” quarry.
Quarrying in profile: Carrière des Grands Caous