CCTV Finance quoted CNBC's March 5 report that the world is facing a crisis of sand shortage. In the past 20 years, global sand use has tripled, partly because of rapid urbanization. According to United Nations estimates, global sand usage is 10 times that of cement. In other words, in terms of construction projects alone, the world consumes about 40-50 billion tons of sand every year. The amount of sand consumed far exceeds the natural growth rate of sand.

According to the report, although the United Nations put the sand shortage crisis on the agenda in 2019, there is still a lack of detailed plans for sustainable sand mining and use, and future industrialization, population growth and urbanization are likely to promote explosive growth in demand for sand.

When natural sand "is hard to find" has almost become the norm in the market, while various domestic infrastructure constructions continue to advance, under such heavy pressure, industry participants and even government departments have begun to turn their attention to "mechanical sand and gravel." In November 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the ten departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Mechanism Sand and Stone Industry" to encourage the establishment of a reasonable domestic mechanism sand and stone supply system; the follow-up "On the expansion of strategic emerging industries The Guiding Opinions on Investing in Cultivating and Growing New Growth Pole Growth Pole", even more, the mechanism sand is listed as a key product and service of strategic emerging industries.

Although local governments have followed in the footsteps, such as Zhejiang, Guizhou, Jiangxi and other provinces have also issued relevant documents, but the effect is not particularly obvious, there are many problems in the machine-made sand market, and product quality is uneven. The limitations of the production process and the lack of high-quality standards for machine-made sand and gravel from different parent rocks are not conducive to the production and promotion of high-quality machine-made sand, and the resistance to industrial upgrading is quite large.

In addition, the market's acceptance of machine-made sand is far lower than that of natural sand. Taking the lead in promoting machine-made sand in a certain area means that enterprises need to pay more effort and cost. At the same time, in coastal areas such as Guangdong Province, a large amount of washed (sea) sand, including strait sand, has occupied the Pearl River Delta construction sand market with a larger supply, lower price, and better grain size. The promotion of sand caused great resistance. From the current situation of the industry, the promotion of mechanism sand has a long way to go. (Article source: sand and gravel aggregate net, invaded and deleted)