In September 2014, the BBK I undertook a trip through Germany, Austria, Italy and France. Within 18 days we visited 14 interesting destinations, these included several open pits, underground mines, suppliers and historic mining areas. All visited destinations are shown in the following figure.
The "Steinexpo" was attended. As every third year the fair was held in Europe's largest basalt quarry "Hochberg" of Mitteldeutsche Hartenstein industry AG in Homberg (Nieder-Ofleiden). After visiting the Steinexpo, we have visited the potash mine Hattorf-Wintershall. The works Hattorf and Wintershall are part of the Werra plant, which is operated by the K + S Kali GmbH.
In the Central German lignite mining region, we visited the United Schleenhain open pit mine. In order to follow the processing chain of coal, we were given a guided tour in the to the briquette and dust factory of Deuben, as well. Furthermore, the "Glückauf" mine in Sondershausen (GSES mbH) was visited. Here, rock salt is mined for de-icing purposes since 2005.
The mining method employed in the steeply dipping deposit, the Vertical Raise Mining, was of particular interest to us due to its uniqueness. For each of the steeply dipping chambers a raise bore hole is created from the surface, which opens into an underground cross-cut. The chamber is then mined out by drilling and blasting from an mobile working platform in the raise..
On the same day, the marble quarry, operated by Alpha Calcit, was visited, too. Also the quarry of Gummern (Omya GmbH) as the second largest open pit operation in Austria was visited.
The tungsten mine of Mittersill (Wolfram Bergbau Hütten AG) presented a further opportunity to explore the diversity of alpine underground mining. A variety of mining methods can be seen here including backfill operations.
In Colmar (Alsace), we visited the factories of Liebherr France SAS. In addition to the field of hydraulic mining excavators also smaller machines for civil ground motion are produced. In addition to the visit to the sites we had the opportunity to discuss the mining crisis with representatives of the management.
Back in Germany, the rock salt mine in Heilbronn was visited. In contrast to the previously toured salt mines, is produces only rock salt. Our final mine visit was then done at the underground gypsum mine Hüttenheim of Knauf Gips AG.