Volvo Construction Equipment is supporting the Pouw Group in eastern Holland by hauling a mountain of recyclable materials around its 35,000 m2 sorting site in Utrecht.
Sifting through debris from demolitions, oil-contaminated soil, industrial waste and scrap metal can be a grueling task. But with Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) machines on site to lend the Pouw Group some muscle, the job gets done, quickly, efficiently and safely. Making use of their impressive strength, Volvo excavators and loaders make the job look easy – even more so, when installed with the latest, most powerful, Tier 4i/Stage IIIB engines.
Once the scrap material has been delivered to Utrecht’s site by the truck load, Pouw uses its enormous industrial mechanical sorter to divide the materials into different categories of waste. Then it’s time for the Volvo CE machines to do the heavy lifting and place the materials onto Pouw’s moving conveyor belts. When the materials have been categorized and stored correctly, a lot of the materials are then sold to building contractors for industrial and construction purposes.
A second career
The Pouw Group recycles all types of waste products, putting them back to good use. Certified granular material produced from the waste can be used for road construction and the concrete industry. A lot of the recycled materials are used as sub-base on highway projects. The company is constantly looking into new technology that will increase the amount of salvageable and reusable building materials.
“Our company employs 450 people in six different branches throughout the Netherlands,” says Alexander Pouw, owner of the eponymous company. “We recycle demolition and construction waste, clean soil, and also produce mortar – and then our transport company uses 120 vehicles to move the material all over the country.”
Established by Alexander’s father in 1981, the company started as a transport firm and supplier of primary building materials. Over the years it expanded and became a supplier to the soil, road, water and concrete construction sections.
The heft in Holland
“Our Volvo loaders and excavators are used in just about every area on the site,” Pouw says. “They sort all the big heavy stuff, stack material, load trucks, feed crushers and hoppers, and load boats. We couldn’t do our job without them.”
The company now has 20 Volvo CE machines, including six of the latest front-end wheel loaders, the L350, L220, L180, L110, L120, excavator EC480, as well as Volvo Truck’s FH and FM series – featuring the newest and most powerful emission compliant engines. The machines handle up to two million tons of waste products on site every year.
“The new machines are a cut above the rest,” says Pouw. “Don’t get me wrong; we still love our older machines, but even at lower engine speeds the new models have much more power. It’s remarkable, really. We always had to really push the previous machines at peak revs, and now we use much lower engine speeds but reach higher torque levels. These new powerful engines make all the difference. For us it’s of the utmost importance and it’s what sets Volvo apart from other manufacturers.”