Green Quarry

Bremanger Quarry, near Florø in Western Norway, is known as the "Green Quarry. The entire production process is designed around efficiency and maximum use of gravity. From the extraction and crushing of the stone to the final loading of the ships.

The stone is extracted by cutting the mountain in slices of about 15 meters thickness. This creates flat plateaus over which the rock pieces are transported to the nearby shaft. Because of the horizontal transport over short distances considerably less fuel is consumed by the modern dump trucks.

In the shaft, the stones fall approximately 200 meters. The enormous impact causes the stones to break without the use of energy. This results in a primary crushing purely by gravity and kinetic energy.

Conveyor belt generating power
After the free fall, the rocks enter the underground crushers. After crushing, the material is transported down to sea level by a 1.5 km long conveyor belt with a 15% downslope. The conveyor belt's braking energy generates electricity, which is used to power the crushers. The surplus energy is delivered back to the Norwegian grid.

Safe and efficient loading
Through remote controlled hatches underneath the stockpiles, the stones fall automatically onto a belt that runs to the floating ship loader. The sheltered bay allows even the largest vessels - including fallpipe ships - to load safely and efficiently, at speeds of up to 5,000 tons per hour.

An important advantage of Bremanger Quarry is that almost the entire installation is underground. The mountain face remains intact, making the quarry barely visible from the outside. Because the entire crushing and transportation process takes place inside the mountain, noise and dust are kept to a minimum.

Control room
All installations are operated from a modern control room outside the mountain. This makes the process safer, more efficient and minimizes physical work inside the mountain.

Bremanger Quarry was developed with a clear vision for the future. During extraction, funds are already set aside for responsible decommissioning and landscape restoration.

Pumped Hydro Storage
The stone extraction from within the mountain also offers a unique opportunity: the development of a Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS) facility. After extraction of the stone, a basin of more than 180 million m³ is created, which, combined with an altitude difference of about 300 meters, provides storage capacity of around 150 GWh - enough to supply the city of Bergen with electricity for a month.

Sustainable energy storage
With the growth of Norwegian wind and hydropower projects, Bremanger is ideally positioned as the region's "Green Battery". This will transform the Green Quarry into one of Northern Europe's most sustainable energy storage sites in the future.

Bremanger Quarry is unique in the world: a largely underground quarry where gravity drives the production process. Due to the minimal transport distances, energy generation and underground crushing, the quarrying process takes place with virtually no environmental impact and with exceptional efficiency. As a result, Bestone® from the "Green Quarry" has one of the lowest footprints in the market and a very favorable 'MKI' (the Dutch Environmental Cost Indicator) value.

Bremanger Quarry - where nature and innovation come together.