The marble deposits
The marble massif in the Lasa Valley (Laaser Tal) which Lasa Marmo uses, rises along the northeast fold flank of the Ortles Group (Ortlerguppe), about 40 km west of the city Merano (Meran), within the municipal area of Lasa (Laas) in the Venosta Valley (Laaser Tal). The limestone which sedimented 400 million years ago in the north of Africa was transformed by overburden pressure and temperatures of up to 600 degrees Celsius into white, metamorphic marble and during the Variscan orogeny (mountain making) shifted to the area of Lasa (Laas). The entire marble deposit of the so-called Laas Unit, which describes very large pure white inclusions of marble, is estimated to 500 million cubic meter.
Hand in hand with nature and the local population
A declared goal of Lasa Marmo GmbH (Ltd.) is the realisation of the first CO2/climate-neutral and energy-autonomous marble quarry and marble processing plant. As a company, we take into account the fact that our quarry areas are located in ecologically highly sensitive areas of the Stelvio National Park (Nationalpark Stilfser Joch), which was created in 1935.
That our intention to extract the white LASA marble in harmony with the ecosystem of the National Park is not an empty claim was already proven by the new owners of Lasa Marmo GmbH in 2007 with the field mapping of the Lasa Valley (Laaser Tal). We would like to use the mountain water flowing off in the White Water Quarry to run the marble extraction in the quarry and the marble processing in the Lasa marble plant “energy-autonomously”, by operating our own electric power plant. With regard to the transport of marble, we support in principle the resolution of the South Tyrolean provincial government No. 1244 of 2018, which provides for the road-based transport of marble for all quarry operators in the Stelvio National Park - in the medium term with hydrogen-powered trucks.
The marble from the Lasa valley
It is easy to see why the eastern part of the romantic Lasa valley (Laaser Tal) is also known as the “marble mountains” and it seems that the four hundred million year old deposits will go on forever. Long before marble was quarried on a large scale here, local people hauled blocks of it down into the valley and collected what fell down the side of the Jenn mountain (Jennwand-Ries) of its own accord. It is not known for sure how long this kind of activity continued but we find crude marble blocks and sheets used for the construction of various Romanesque churches with their statues and portal entrance arches as well as door arches from the VIII and IX centuries and even earlier boundary stones and menhir dating from the Neolithic and pre-Christian eras. Over 100 years ago pioneers opened the quarries in the Lasa Valley (Laaser Tal). To this day the White Water Quarry remains the area’s main source of marble.