Represa Quarry, La Florida, San Luis, Argentina

The San Luis Mining Group, part of the SSQ group, is a mining and processing company based in San Luis, the state capital of the province of San Luis in central Argentina.

The San Luis Slate Company now produces SSQ Riverstone roofing slates along with a comprehensive range of architectural products including pavings; floor tiles in four finishes; copings; sills; stair treads and internal and external cladding.
 

The Represa Quarry

The company owns the Represa Quarry in the La Florida area of San Luis, approximately 25 kms north-east of the factory. The quarry extends over a north-south distance of nearly 50 kms and has an extensive reserve of slate that dates back to the Cambrian period (550 million years ago). The principal quarry, being exploited by the company, is know as The Represa Quarry and is the largest slate quarry in the San Luis region.

Quarrying uses conventional drilling along with a small amount of blasting using black powder to take advantage of the rock's natural lines of cleavage. Traditional diamond wire cutting has been trialed in the quarry but the results showed this to be more resource intensive, so other methods are being researched in an effort to make the quarrying process as environmentally friendly as possible.

Once quarried, the blocks are quality checked and either sent to the factory for processing or, if deemed 'unacceptable' are split on site to make crazy paving for the local market. This ensures that as much of the quarried rock is used, minimising wastage.
 

The Factory

The state-of-the-art processing plant was designed so that all work is carried out under cover. The blocks arrive direct from the quarry and are unloaded and cut to size before split by hand andhand and then dressed and finished as required. 
 

General

The finished products, be they roofing slates or architectural stone, comply with all international standards including the latest EN Standards for flooring and roofing.

The quality of the rock is outstanding. Its hardness and durability allows it to be honed and finished to a degree that is unattainable with softer slate from other regions around the world, making it ideal for highly polished surfaces. And its strength allows it to be split into roofing slates just 4mm thick for the French market but which are still sufficiently strong to allow sizes of up to 600 x 300mm for the UK and USA markets!
 

Splitting slates