Two Italian 80 blade gang saws were the first processing unit to become operational. These cut stone blocks into slabs in thicknesses from 1cm upwards. The slabs then need to be finished. Some of Fox Marble's stone (mainly the Alexandrian, which is brought to Kosovo for processing from the Prilep quarry in North Macedonia) can be sent straight from the gang saws to the polishing line but the rest usually requires an intermediate stage - resining. The resin line, like all the machinery in the factory except the cranes Italian, where epoxy resin is applied to individual slabs to fill any natural imperfections and then cured in giant ovens, became operational during summer 2017. The final stage of slab processing is polishing. Fox Marble's 19 head polishing line was commissioned in parallel with the resin line. From September 2017 it has been producing polished and honed (smooth but matt) slabs at up to 7m a minute.
The gang saws and the polishing line use large amounts of water for lubrication. This is provided in a closed reticulation system topped up from a borehole. The lubrication water picks up stone particles as it is used and so has to be constantly cleaned. This takes place in water filtration plant outside the SW corner of the factory. Built to an Italian design, much of this was fabricated locally. In addition to producing clean water, the plant, with its Italian built filter press, produces a compressed marble sludge. The company is currently examining options for selling this bi-product to tile fixative manufacturers.
Two further processing units were added in March/April 2018. The first of these was a block resining facility. Some blocks need to be strengthened on the outside before they go to the gang saws in order to ensure an even cut. This is achieved by vacuum sealing resin and fibreglass onto the surface of a block. The block resining facility was designed and built locally.
The second was the company's first cut to size processing line. This is a state of the art Italian CNC bridge cutter capable of producing high volumes of stone tiles and larger polygonal shapes. At the time of installation it was the most sophisticated machine of its type in the Balkans (including Greece) and was already producing tiles for export to the UK and Italy in its first week of operation.
Increasing demand for cut to size stone has led to the installation of two further bridge saws - one large (non CNC) and one small manual machine for small and simple shape orders. A cut stone edge shaper and polisher has also been installed as have a variety of tools for producing specialist finishes such as bush hammered and sand blasted.