As the raw material rolls out of the sorting system, round gravel, indispensable for mixing concrete and for the construction industry as a whole.
On the extensive area in Otto Dörner's sand and gravel works in Nützen near Bad Bramstedt there are heaps of sand of various qualities.
The small yield of gravel this morning under the conveyor belt of the vibrating system, on the other hand, looks almost as modest as the coveted precious metal in the washing sieve of a gold prospector.
"Here in the deposit there is only ten to twelve percent gravel of different grain sizes, the rest of the material is sand," says Tilmann Quensell, managing director of the Hamburg company Otto Dörner. “Gravel is much scarcer in the north than sand. The scarcity of gravel around Hamburg is becoming more and more visible due to the extreme and sustained construction activity. Every now and then, like at the beginning of 2020, there are real bottlenecks. "