Sdreening and crushing: Stonefields quarrying

Date: 07.06.2024

Crush & Screen team hired out its Powerscreen 400x jaw crusher and two Indeco rock breaker attachments to their client March Cato Developments for a swansong project

The last basalt rock ever to be crushed in this quarry

These machines were put to work on one of the last development sites in what used to be the old Winstone’s Lunn Ave Quarry. Today, it’s called ‘Stonefields’ and it’s a large Auckland housing and community project that’s been underway since 2006. 

This 110-hectare site has a remarkable history. It operated as the Mt Wellington Quarry as far back as the 1920s. In the mid-1930s, it was bought by Percy Winstone and was known as the Lunn Ave Quarry. 

Mt Wellington Quarry in the 1920s. Photo: Dalmatian Archive & Museum

Under Winstone’s 50-odd years of operation (1936 to mid-1990s), the quarry produced more than 35 million tonnes of volcanic basalt rock aggregate that was integral to the building of Auckland city’s roads and motorways over that time, as well as for the concrete used at Māngere Airport.

The quarry was eventually decommissioned in 2001, but at its peak during the ’80s, it was producing two million tonnes a year of materials, making it New Zealand’s largest quarry for aggregate. It had what was said to be the largest crusher unit (140 tonnes) in the country.

In 2001, the site — one of the largest undeveloped blocks of land in greater Auckland at the time — was sold to Landco (as it was known then).

In 2002, Fletcher Residential bought the land surrounding the quarry from Landco and together they earmarked the entire 110 hectares for a housing and community development project called Stonefields. 

That project has since earned recognition as the pioneer of master-planned communities. Upon the completion of the last housing site, the project will have culminated in 2900 homes and apartments for more than 6000 people.

Crush & Screen hires crushing and screening machinery and is the distributor for Italian brand Indeco hydraulic attachments. The rocks processed by Crush & Screen’s rock breakers and jaw crusher came from the hard basalt lava on a section of the quarry that’s almost 20 metres below ground level.

Using an Indeco rock breaker to break down the basalt boulders

These will be the very last rocks ever to be quarried and crushed on the historic site. The operator used an Indeco HP5000 and an HP3500 rock breaker, both hired from Crush & Screen, to break up the basalt boulders from the quarry.

This prepared the rock for further processing through the Powerscreen 400x jaw crusher before being screened and stockpiled. The aggregate produced will later be used on-site as construction material for the residential development.

In total, more than 10,000 tonnes of rock was processed on this site using Crush & Screen’s hired equipment. Crush & Screen has mobile crushers, screens, and stackers for hire and a range of quality Indeco attachments for sale and hire.

For more details, contact jason@crushandscreen.co.nz or visit crushandscreen.co.nz.

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