The Australian Quarrying Industry
Overview of the Australian Quarrying Industry
Quarries provide earth materials such as sand, gravel, crushed rock and clay that we process into raw material inputs for buildings and construction, agriculture and industrial processes. Approximately 90% of the output from quarries in Australia is used in the building and construction industries.
Australia is fortunate because nearly all our cities and towns have had access to nearby rock (or extractive) resources from which we can make aggregates. Aggregates are the processed rock, gravel and sand products we use to help build our houses, schools, roads, bridges, commercial and industrial buildings, airports, railways and other basic infrastructure our society needs.
The availability of suitable rock and construction sands close to the markets that need them has helped minimise the overall cost to our community of buildings and infrastructure development. The prosperity of our domestic economy historically, and today, is linked to our ability to maintain such natural advantages. In the year 2000 alone, we produced over 130 million tonnes of aggregates for building and construction purposes with an estimated ex-quarry value of $1.3 billion. The majority of these aggregates were produced from quarries within 100 km of our cities and town centres.
Fortuitous geology and favourable geographic locations are natural advantages that need to be preserved if we are to sustain our modern society and build for the future. But in order to harness such natural advantages and convert such natural resources into useful rock products, Australia needs a responsible and viable industry that can produce and communicate results ….. not only in economic terms, but also in social and environmental outcomes that meet the needs and expectations of the people of Australia.
The Australian quarrying industry continues to strive for and produce such outcomes. The industry comprises quarry operators and equipment and service providers. Quarry operators range from large multi-national companies operating throughout Australia’s metropolitan and provincial centres to small family owned quarries and municipal quarries serving provincial and rural markets.
Quarrying is a natural resource industry, conducted not in isolation but as part of a chain of inter-connected activities. These extend from the finding and securing of earth resources, to processing and the manufacture and transportation of simple as well as sophisticated construction and building materials, to the interactions and impacts on surrounding communities and ultimately to recycling and post extractive end-uses where old quarries are put to new uses.
Australian companies were amongst the first in the world to identify the inherent value of the integration of quarrying with downstream construction material manufacturing such as pre-mixed concrete and to develop and globally apply business models that could harness such value adding. In the space of several decades Australian quarrying and construction materials companies have forged an international presence and identity to become pre-eminent amongst the world’s integrated construction materials companies.
This continual development and export of technical expertise acquired through generations of innovation, hard work and with major contributions from migrants to Australia, is a realisation of the ‘clever country’ vision. This legacy continues. With origins that pre-date the arrival of Europeans by thousands of years, the Australian Quarrying industry continues to create rock products that enhance the quality of life for our communities.
In the new millennium, this extends both domestically and internationally to responding to modern challenges defined by globalisation and sustainability. Such challenges include the development of successful businesses that meet local community needs as well as operating across local, state government or even national boundaries through to identifying and introducing new and innovative technologies and management practices in waste minimisation and natural resource management that further reduce the ‘ecological footprint’ of the quarrying industry.
--[top]--
