Nutmeg Gravel and Excavating Inc., a 16-year-old company based in Windham, CT, specializes in producing gravel and loam, but it also does material trucking, excavation, on-site recycling and site work, which includes residential, commercial and subdivisions. What’s more, Nutmeg does a lot of utility installation, and the company offers materials for sale to eastern Connecticut contractors and municipalities.

Nutmeg uses approximately 50 percent of what it produces, such as roadbase, bedding sand, rip rap and top soil, on its own construction projects.

A company that produces this much material needs a machine that can efficiently and cost-effectively process it, which is why Nutmeg recently purchased a Metso (Nordberg) SW-351 screening plant from Eastern Equipment, based in Berlin, CT. Designed for mid-size contractors and sand and gravel operations, the SW-351 screening plant allows for production of three different products simultaneously.

“When we were looking to buy a new machine, we knew that our demands called for a very flexible one,” said Mark Koss, whose father Peter J. Koss, founded the company. “We needed a machine that could screen top soil as a stand-alone process. We also needed to make sub-base and simultaneously process gravel, and have a plant that we could set up in series with a jaw and cone to produce aggregate.

“We decided to purchase the Metso unit for several reasons,” said Mark Koss. “One, the name and reputation of Metso [Nordberg]. We knew that support and service expertise would come with the Metso name. Second, when we compared the features of the Metso with its competitors, we felt that Metso had the edge … mostly because we were impressed with the oversized 13-yd. hopper and felt that Metso’s conveyor system gave us a wider range of adjustable height configurations.”

Currently, the Metso SW-351 is set up at a large residential development site in eastern Connecticut where its flexibility and workload capacity are being put to the test. The plant is being directly fed excavated materials and rock by a Telsmith 30- by 42-in. crusher. The screening plant simultaneously is producing two different products, 2- to 6-in. (5 to 15.2 cm) Gabion stone and 2-in. (5 cm) minus aggregate base. The Telsmith crusher is crushing more than 120 yds. (109.7 m) per hour. According to Koss, the Metso plant has met all of the requirements that Nutmeg was looking for.

Nutmeg will be producing 60,000 to 80,000 yds. (54,864 to 73,152 m) of product annually and so far, the SW-351 easily is carrying the workload and is doing it cost-effectively, according to Koss, who also has been pleased with Eastern Equipment’s role.

“The representatives from Eastern Equipment, Steve Farnham and Gerry Knowlton, gave us a very fair trade number on our previous machine. In the past, we’d received good support from Eastern Equipment on our Kawasaki loaders and that gave us a level of comfort with Eastern,” he said.

“The support we’ve received from Eastern Equipment’s personnel and from Eric Bjornson of Metso [Nordberg] has been excellent. Metso and Eastern Equipment have worked as a team to assure our satisfaction. For example, we ran into some snags in the initial setup of the machine and Metso and Eastern proved that we had made the right choice in putting our trust in them because they very quickly went the extra mile to make sure we were completely satisfied.”

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