Environmental Management
Cupa Natural Slate has achieved ISO 14001:2000 certification in recognition of its environmental credentials. The company has been working towards the establishment of an Environmental Policy, ensuring compliance with local, national and international environmental rules and best practice. Cupa Staff have been proactively engaged in paper recycling, reducing energy consumption and various other daily activities, to further improve the company’s environmental standing.
The Cupa engineering and service division is in charge of geology, mining and geo-technical analysis, prospecting tasks, sample tests and evaluation of seams. The department also directs mining operations.
Slate is initially quarried in large sections using a diamond beaded steel cable. Throughout the whole extraction and transformation process, water is used both to cool the machinery and cleanse the slate. The water is recycled and purified in a closed circuit to avoid wasting any of this precious resource.
In processing plants within each quarry large slate fragments are sorted and laser sawn along their natural ‘cleavage’ planes into smaller regular blocks. These blocks are then hand-split by skilled craftsmen into slates of the correct thickness. The edges of each slate are dressed and pre-holed, if required, to the desired head lap. The slates are then quality checked, sorted and bar coded. Finally the finished slates are packed meticulously for transportation.
- Slate excavation and production do not employ any chemical processes of any kind
- Once all the usable slate rock has been removed, unused slate is returned to the quarry and adjacent land
- The landscape is then reinstated with soil, grasses and vegetation, under government supervision