01. Under the big infrastructure, sand and gravel meet opportunities again!
In the face of the impact of the epidemic, since various places have resumed work after the Spring Festival, many provinces have released their 2020 project investment plans. As of March 20, 25 provinces, cities and districts including Beijing, Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Ningxia have released a total of 22,000 projects with a total investment of 49.6 trillion yuan, of which the total investment planned for 2020 is 7.6 trillion yuan. All kinds of signs are becoming more and more obvious, and big infrastructure is becoming a new driving force for the economy.
Speed up progress, speed up approval, and speed up construction. Under the pressure of stabilizing growth, the approval speed of infrastructure projects has also accelerated recently.
According to data released by the National Development and Reform Commission, as of March 20, the infrastructure projects approved by the National Development and Reform Commission reached 228.605 billion yuan, 93.029 billion yuan more than the same period last year; as of February 25, the resumption rate of 533 major transportation projects nationwide was 70.17%.
02. Who would have thought that there would be a “scarcity” of sand?
At the same time, the current resource and environmental constraints and control are increasingly strengthened, the mining of natural river sand is banned and restricted, and the global sand shortage situation is getting worse, resulting in more prominent contradictions in the supply and demand of construction sand and gravel.
Since 2018, the supply of sand and gravel aggregates in many places across the country has been in urgent need, and “sand is hard to find” has almost become the norm. Data show that Henan’s annual demand for construction sand is about 210 million tons, while the approved river sand mining volume in the province is only about 40 million tons, with a gap of more than 80%; Fujian’s annual average construction sand volume from 2019 to 2021 is expected to be 110 million cubic meters, but the gap is 75%.
In Hubei, due to the risk of supply interruption of concrete raw materials, some high-speed rail, airport, highway and other projects were forced to stop work, and construction units complained about this. In addition, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Hainan and other provinces have also experienced “sand shortages” one after another, and some sand fields in Huizhou, Guangdong have even adopted the method of “lottery supply of sand” to supply sand and gravel in limited quantities every day.
In fact, the sand and gravel aggregates used in my country in the past were basically natural sand and gravel collected directly from rivers and mines. After years of mining, the resources are facing the risk of depletion. With the continuous advancement of my country’s ecological civilization construction, resource and environmental constraints and control are increasingly strengthened, and the contradiction between supply and demand is more prominent. The price of sand and gravel continues to rise. In some areas, the price of sand and gravel has increased by nearly 100%. Coastal areas such as Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Hainan have been forced to start importing large quantities of sand and gravel from Malaysia, North Korea and other countries.
Where is the road for the sand and gravel industry under the resource supply crisis?
03. Artificial sand becomes the “new favorite” of the market
1. Resource advantage: various waste resources can be used, such as tailings, construction waste, pebbles, stone chips, etc., which not only solves the problem of environmental pollution, but also meets the requirements of energy conservation and environmental protection;
2. Quality advantage: clean raw materials, continuous grading of aggregates, and the fineness modulus of artificial sand can be adjusted according to the formula of concrete and mortar to meet the needs of various dry-mixed mortars, commercial concrete, asphalt concrete, high-performance concrete, etc.;
3. Management advantage: with stable legal person status, mining license, and fixed business premises, it can effectively prevent illegal mining, protect the environment, increase government tax revenue, and improve the comprehensive utilization rate of resources;
4. Cost advantage: 10%-30% of cement can be saved in the preparation of concrete; it can be matched with dry mixing, no drying is required, and the drying cost is saved by 10 yuan/ton.
Artificial sand is widely used in my country. It is understood that domestically produced machine-made sand and gravel were first used in some major projects in Beijing in the early days of the founding of New China and in the construction of the Maotiao River cascade hydropower station in central Guizhou in 1958. In recent years, high-quality machine-made sand has also been used in the construction of major projects such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the Three Gorges Bridge.
