Monday, October 4, 2010

A tour of Dufferin Aggregates…

Well, at least I got my high speed internet back today!  This is good!

This past Saturday when we were down in Woodstock, we wanted to attend the open house of Dufferin Aggregates.  This is where Kristina’s Husband, Chris works in quality control.  It is called the Blair Pit where they had the open house, and it is not open to the public, other than open house day!  It was not a good weather day, as it was cool, and rain, but that did not stop us, and they had a bunch of tents set up to get us out of the weather.

At this pit, they basically mine gravel.  They crush it and clean it and sort it, and then sell it!  They have a lot of large machines to accomplish this.

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They also have an asphalt plant on site, as well as a ready mix cement plant.

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One of these buckets can pick up 8 tons of material…

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There is over 3 klms.  of conveyor belts to move the material around and pile it!

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Here is Chris on the left, directing traffic as it came into the site, yes, it was raining pretty hard…

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22 employees make their living working here, and you can see and hear the pride in working for Dufferin.  Dufferin is owned by a larger Company called Holcim which is Global in size.  They are also big on being responsible Corporate citizens, and you can see in the picture below, how they have be rehabilitating the land that they have mined.  This particular area will be a conservation area.

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They even built a pond on the site which is fed by underground water sources.

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I cannot remember her name, but this Lady is a Marine Biologist and works with Dufferin on returning land and ponds to original condition.  She was really interesting to talk to and described how life can rebuild itself in these ponds.

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This is an actual open face in the mine area that is currently being mined.  This area of the province is rich in gravel type land, due to the way the ice came and then melted many years ago…

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I wanted to check out some of the toys and get dirty!  Judy and Kristina are laughing at me…

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While they were laughing at me, I was looking for the key so I could start this puppy up!  Never did find it…  Baring teeth smile

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Kristina had to get in on the action…

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Now this was cool, they had a mineral display set up with real microscopes!  Judy and Kristina were only interested in finding gold… 

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You can’t see him, but this employee had a display set up on cement products.  He is holding a sample of concrete that you can actually pour a glass of water on it, and it simply drains through the concrete!  Very cool, and avoids water pooling on the top of your driveway, for example…

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Dufferin has an excellent hot breakfast that we all enjoyed so no one went away hungry!  Overall, just an excellent day that I really enjoyed!  I love going a seeing things that you normally do not have access to.  Thanks for inviting us Chris!

We spent a wonderful day today at the Morrison Farm in Alliston, and you will see some pics of this tomorrow…

Till tomorrow…

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