Sirius Minerals awards Lockwood Beck geotechnical contract
25 October 2018Great Britain – Sirius Minerals has awarded another geotechnical contract for the York Potash project. Bachy Soletanche won a GBP 4M contract for geotechnical work associated with the intermediate shaft at Lockwood Beck, which will provide access to the tunnel that will contain the Mineral Transport System.
The team is currently on site preparing to install a secant wall to form the launch chamber from which a specialist mining contractor will sink the intermediate shaft. The secant wall, consisting of 44 rotary bored piles with a diameter of 1200mm, will be drilled to a depth of 20m.
Following the completion of the wall, Bachy Soletanche’s geotechnics division will construct a grout curtain to help facilitate the excavation of the intermediate shaft. The low permeable barrier, commencing 15m below the ground level, will be installed to a depth of 160m, forming a ‘dry shaft’ below the secant wall.
Currently under construction near Whitby, the state-of-the-art underground mine will target the extraction of polyhalite, a unique type of potash and a multi-nutrient fertilizer, which will be transported on a conveyor belt along a 23-mile tunnel to Teesside for processing and shipping.
