01. Under the large-scale infrastructure construction, sand and gravel will encounter opportunities again!

Under the impact of the epidemic, many provinces have released project investment plans for 2020 since various regions resumed work one after another after the Spring Festival. As of March 20, 25 provinces and municipalities including Beijing, Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Ningxia had announced 22,000 projects with a total investment amount of 49.6 trillion yuan, of which the total planned investment in 2020 was 7.6 trillion yuan. There are increasingly clear signs that large-scale infrastructure is becoming a new driving force for the economy.

Accelerate progress, speed up approval, and speed up the start of construction. Under the pressure of stabilizing growth, the approval speed of recent infrastructure projects has also increased.

Data released by the National Development and Reform Commission show that 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 across the country was 70.17% .

02. Who would have thought that sand would also suffer from “famine”

At the same time, resource and environmental constraints and controls are becoming increasingly severe. The mining of natural river sand is prohibited and restricted, and the global sand shortage is getting worse, causing the contradiction between the supply and demand of construction sand and gravel to become increasingly prominent.

Since 2018, the supply of sand and gravel aggregates has been in short supply in many places across the country, and it is almost the norm that "it is hard to find a piece of sand". Data shows that the annual demand for construction sand in Henan is about 210 million tons, while the province's approved river sand mining volume is only about 40 million tons, a gap of more than 80%; Fujian's average annual construction sand consumption from 2019 to 2021 The sand volume is forecast to be 110 million cubic meters, but the gap is 75%.

In Hubei, due to the risk of supply interruption of sand and gravel, the raw material for making concrete, some high-speed rail, airport, highway and other projects have been forced to suspend construction. Construction units are complaining about this. In addition, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Hainan and other provinces have also experienced "sand shortages" one after another. Some sand yards in Huizhou, Guangdong Province even adopt a "lottery supply" to supply limited amounts of sand and gravel every day.

In fact, the sand and gravel aggregates used in our country in the past were basically natural sand and gravel collected directly from rivers and mines. Years of mining have put the resources at risk of depletion. As my country's ecological civilization construction continues to advance, resource and environmental constraints and controls have become increasingly strengthened, making the contradiction between supply and demand more prominent. Sand and gravel prices have also continued to rise, with sand and gravel prices rising by nearly 100% in some areas. As a last resort, coastal areas such as Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Hainan have begun to import large quantities of sand and gravel from countries such as Malaysia and North Korea.

Amid the resource supply crisis, where will the sand and gravel industry go?

03. Machine-made sand has become the “new favorite” of the market

1. Resource advantages: 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 advantages: The raw materials are clean, the aggregates are continuously graded, and the fineness modulus of machine-made sand can be adjusted according to the concrete and mortar formula to meet the needs of various types of dry mixed mortar, commercial concrete, asphalt concrete, high-performance concrete, etc.;

3. Management advantages: There is a stable legal entity, mining license is implemented, and there is a fixed business location. It can effectively prevent indiscriminate mining and excavation, protect the environment, increase government tax revenue and improve the comprehensive utilization rate of resources;

4. Cost advantage: Preparing concrete can save 10%-30% of cement; when used with dry mixing, drying is unnecessary and the drying cost is saved by 10 yuan/ton.

Machine-made sand is widely used in our country. It is understood that the earliest application of domestic machine-made sand and gravel was in some major projects in Beijing in the early days of the founding of New China. In 1958, it was also used in the construction of the Maotiaohe Cascade Hydropower Station in central Guizhou. 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 Dam.

"High-quality machine-made sand and gravel are industrial products manufactured on a large scale using modern crushing and screening equipment, and their performance is better than that of natural sand and gravel." Hu Youyi believes that the surface of natural sand and gravel has changed due to tens of thousands of years of erosion on the river. It is different from machine-made sand and gravel in shape and form. However, with the continuous advancement of machine-made sand and gravel processing technology and the continuous improvement of equipment technology, machine-made sand and gravel can be made better than natural sand and gravel.

It is generally believed in the industry that industrially produced products are better than natural products in terms of quality balance and other aspects, so machine-made sand and gravel can completely replace natural sand and gravel, and even have advantages in applications in high-performance concrete.

On November 4, 2019, ten departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Mechanized Sand and Gravel Industry", emphasizing the rational placement of sand and gravel Resource mining rights, standardize the management of sand and gravel resources, encourage the use of waste rock, tailings and other production mechanism sand and gravel, and save natural resources.

The above-mentioned "Opinions" require overall coordination and layout to establish a reasonable domestic mechanism-based sand and gravel supply system. According to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and other important urban agglomerations, as well as the construction needs of the central and western regions, sand and gravel resource mining rights will be allocated reasonably. Expand the sources of sand and gravel, standardize the management of sand and gravel resources, encourage the use of waste rock and tailings from iron, molybdenum, vanadium and titanium mines to produce mechanism sand and gravel, save natural resources, and promote industrial agglomeration.

The "Opinions" emphasize the need to strengthen the development and integration of sand and gravel resources, promote the scale and intensification of machine-made sand and gravel production, and build a number of large-scale production bases. Encourage the development of industrial parks integrating sand, gravel, cement, concrete and prefabricated buildings to give play to the agglomeration effect. Strive to form a relatively complete and reasonable mechanism-based sand and gravel supply guarantee system by 2025. The proportion of high-quality machine-made sand and gravel will be greatly increased. The production capacity of ultra-large machine-made sand and gravel enterprises with an annual output of 10 million tons and above will account for 40%. The use of tailings, The proportion of machine-made sand and gravel produced from waste rock and other materials has increased significantly.

The industry believes that this guidance on the development of my country's sand and gravel industry will play a decisive role and significance in promoting industry transformation and upgrading, technological progress and high-quality development, and will promote China's sand and gravel industry to enter a new era of high-quality development.

Common raw materials for machine-made sand

①Construction waste: The gravel blocks, concrete blocks and brick fragments in the construction waste can be used as sand and gravel aggregates. Using them as raw materials to produce machine-made sand can greatly reduce the cost of raw material input.

② River pebbles: pure natural stone, which has the characteristics of good color, non-fading, non-toxic, hard texture, etc. It is a green sand-making raw material. There are certain advantages in using machine-made sand made of river pebbles instead of natural sand.

③ Quartz sandstone: A kind of stone containing more than 90% quartz content. It has good particle shape and strength. It is one of the more common raw materials for the production of machine-made sand on the market.

④ Sandstone: Sedimentary rock, mainly composed of feldspar and quartz. It has a stable structure and a sand content of more than 50%. It is a common raw material for machine-made sand production. It has a high stone powder content during the raw material crushing process, so it is used in sand making. When doing so, you need to choose sand making equipment with dust removal performance.

⑤ Slag: industrial waste, which comes from a wide range of sources and has low cost in the actual sand making process. It is also a common sand making raw material.

04.These problems need to be solved urgently

"While technology leads and cross-border integration promotes high-quality and green development of the sand and gravel industry, we should also face up to problems and deficiencies." Hu Youyi, president of the China Sand and Gravel Association, said bluntly, "The development of the sand and gravel aggregate industry We do still face some problems and contradictions that need to be solved urgently.”

First of all, the management of the sand and gravel industry involves multiple departments, making coordination and supervision difficult. The mining, production and application of sand and gravel involve many departments such as natural resources, agriculture, forestry, water conservancy, maritime affairs, urban and rural construction, etc. The sand and gravel industry has always had the problem of repeated cross-management of multiple departments. It is urgent to establish a coordination working mechanism among local governments, industry associations, and enterprises and to formulate industry access standards.

Secondly, unlicensed mining and random mining and excavation have been repeatedly banned. Driven by profit, disorderly competition phenomena and problems such as unlicensed mining, indiscriminate mining, unfairness and unfairness still exist in some areas. Vicious competition between low-priced and low-quality sand and gravel has disrupted the market and affected the use and development of high-quality machine-made sand and gravel.

Thirdly, technological research and development, standardization construction, and quality inspection are not enough. The survey shows that my country’s current investment in research and development of machine-made sand and gravel technology is insufficient, resulting in the overall level being relatively backward. There are still no specialized sand and gravel R&D and design institutions, and there are no sand and gravel majors in colleges and universities. National and corporate testing agencies and Relevant mechanisms need to be improved.

In this regard, the industry generally believes that straightening out management functions, stricting industry management, improving supporting policies, encouraging scientific and technological research and development, improving quality control systems, and improving standards and regulations are the only way to resolve contradictions and problems and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the machine-made sand and gravel industry.

At the same time, based on the development trend of the machine-made sand and gravel industry, relevant industrial policies such as the access conditions for the machine-made sand and gravel industry should be formulated and released in a timely manner. Strengthen access requirements in terms of utilization and production. We will intensify supervision and inspection efforts and resolutely ban illegal activities such as unlicensed mining and indiscriminate mining and excavation. Various regions can establish a sand and gravel supply enterprise registration system to prohibit sand and gravel products produced in violation of regulations from entering the market.

In addition, we should also combine regional resource distribution, market demand, quality and transportation and logistics conditions to plan and layout green and environmentally friendly mechanism-based sand and gravel production bases around the market. When planning the layout of mechanism-based sand and gravel production bases, we should conduct scientific research on the mining area from mining to post-mining management. planning, and strictly require enterprises to carry out mining and treatment in accordance with the planning requirements, so that the mining area can meet the requirements for restoration and treatment or secondary development after mining.