Reflections on a weekend in a Malaysian quarry

By David Palmer

The rallying point was a Hanson quarry in the Klang Valley, a bit over 10km from the centre of the Malaysian capital. There the company demonstrated a representative range of its new equipment for the quarrying and mining industry.
The company started in 1862 on the back of producing high grade stainless steel on an industrial scale for the first time. Now it is a $10bn company employing more than 44,000 people in 130 countries, with the aim of making rock penetration and breaking easier.
Well established in China, Sandvik sees India as the next big thing for its products. Reading between the lines new, simpler – and less expensive - versions of some very sophisticated rock drills and crushers were on show in KL, and are aimed squarely at this market.
As VP of the construction equipment division Anders Kjellberg said, the company aims to lead the world in niches involved in breaking, crushing and screening rocks of all types.
It prides itself in expanding a huge database of rock from around the world, so it will never be surprised by a customer wanting to crush something it has never seen. But he emphasised it was seeking niches and did not aim to be everything for everyone in rock handling.
The Hanson quarry has been in operation for half a century and has about another 15 years life left in delivering granite aggregate to KL. For a first time visitor to a truly tropical city, it was fascinating to see there how well tropical rain forest had colonised the top two or three benches of the soil poor quarry.
Elsewhere too around the city, patches of rainforest were evident everywhere, no doubt in many cases covering up environmental eyesores from poor land use in decades long gone.
But around the airport at least, palm oil plantations stretch for many kilometres, as I know they do across much of tropical Asia. Rubber is however the major crop followed by palm oil and rice.
In the KL museum, the country’s colonial past takes up about one quarter of the floor space. Strangely, while nearly every exhibit had English translations displayed, a panel about the Japanese occupation had none.
The only good word that the curator could apparently find to say about that terrible period in Malaysia’s history, seemed to be on a panel about the rice industry. The Japanese advised local farmers to plant two crops a year as they did in Japan, instead of just one.
Last year “1Malaysia” was born as a rallying number/word, to motivate Malaysians towards becoming a first world developed country, by 2020. Judging by the mass of tollways, excellent roads and shiny new skyscrapers, the concept has been well and truly taken to heart.
But from a tourist’s point of view, I just hope its remaining heritage buildings and landforms, escape the fate that the vast majority in nearby Singapore have not.