Our plants in Giarre

Manufacturing and production of Etna Lava Stone processes

The complexities of the operations on our Basalt stone in order to obtain semi-worked and worked blocks are based on two main principles:

A. Volume treatments: sawing of regular and irregular shaped blocks and reducing them into smaller sizes; in this phase, the blocks are portioned into Slabs, Strips, Paving/Tiles or other handmade items, according to what the final product is going to be.

B. Surface treatments: processing the Lava stone surface to give it a particular aesthetic aspect. The main technologies used in our industry regarding the sawing of Basalt blocks, are mono/multi diamond-disc saw machinery, machines with multi-disc block cutting, giant disc saws and computerized cross-cutting machines.

We would like to add that Fratelli Lizzio was the first company in Sicily and in Southern Italy to use giant diamond disc saws for cutting blocks of Etna Basalt, making it possible to create Etna Lava Stone Slabs of 400x150cm dimensions and 2/3cm thick. Furthermore, for many years, we have used 60 multiple-disc joinery machines, to enable the cutting of irregular shaped and undersized shaped blocks; this represents the perfect technological solution for sawing, which is today the leading equipment for sequential production of paving/tiles and strips. Our cutting machines make it possible to obtain cuts thick 7mm or less. The blocks’ are cut thanks to vertical diamond disc saws and a smaller diameter horizontal disc that works continuously to shear off the strips of our Basalt. The vertical discs cut into the block until a certain depth and, crossing it through all its length, they subdivide it into many strips, called “Filagne”. The horizontal disc then cuts the series of strips at the base of the block. Using such technology, makes it evident that our products and our competitors’ products are deeply different: we have been the first to obtain paving/tiles of less than 7mm and with a precision of +/- 5 tenths. These thin slices are mainly used in the “ceramic sector” or for “raised flooring”, where lava stone is anchored into aluminum or steel honeycomb pillars/frames/buttresses.