Oh dear. Pity poor Holcim UK (formerly Aggregate Industries).
In the very same year the company finally won permission to quarry Straitgate Farm after a near decade-long struggle, the bottom fell out of Devon’s aggregates market, and sales of sand and gravel slumped by an eye-watering 29% – down from 521,000 tonnes to just 370,000 tonnes.
What terrible timing.
The recently published South West Aggregates Working Party Annual Report 2023 says:
Devon’s sales of sand and gravel have remained fairly consistently around the half million tonne mark since 2011. Prior to 2023, 2020 had seen the lowest figure of the decade with sales of 0.437mt (possibly attributable to the effects of the Covid pandemic) whilst 2021 saw a rise back up to 2018 levels, with a sales figure of 0.54mt. 2022 sales remained on a similar level with a sales figure of 0.52mt but 2023 witnessed a fairly dramatic drop down to 0.37mt taking over from 2020 as the lowest figure of the decade by a reasonable margin.
However, the trend has been clear for a long time.
No wonder the company said it would need to mothball Straitgate Farm immediately following implementation of the planning permission.
Why such a dramatic fall in the county’s sand and gravel sales? The same report says:
2.23 Devon has suggested that the decrease in sales this year is a result of the economic uncertainty brought about by market volatility, worldwide events and the pandemic, which the UK economy is still recovering from.
But that hardly explains a 29% slump, when sales of recycled aggregates, crushed rock, and secondary aggregates in the county fell by a far more modest 9%, 5%, and 2% respectively in the same period.
The 29% fall is noticeably more than in the South West as a whole, where sales fell by 18%:
In 2023, aggregate sales of land won sand and gravel in the region totalled 2.26mt, a decrease from 2022’s sales figure of 2.75mt
The contrast is even starker nationally. The MPA’s 11th Annual Mineral Planning Survey Report says that in 2023 across the country, “land-won primary aggregate sales decreased by 5.3%”, with sand and gravel down 7.1%.
So why 29%? As the largest producer of sand and gravel in the county, was part of the decline self-inflicted? Did Holcim UK drop the ball? Could its prices for instance be too high?
And what prospect now for expensive HVO-fuelled 2.5-million-mile haulage schemes? How will the market ever tolerate that?
Things have not improved across the country since 2023. In February this year, the MPA reported:
...ready-mixed concrete, ubiquitous to all types of construction projects, faced a 10.8% annual decline in 2024, reaching its lowest level in over 60 years. Primary aggregates sales declined by 2.6%, with sand and gravel particularly impacted due to weak demand from the struggling ready-mixed concrete market, where it is mostly used.
The heady days of the 80s and 90s, when sales of unsustainable primary virgin land-won sand and gravel exceeded a million tonnes a year, are fortunately long gone. Now the more sustainable alternatives of secondary and recycled aggregates are taking over. Just in the last 10 years, the trend has been only one way, as the graph below shows. In Devon, land-won sand and gravel is now out-sold by both secondary and recycled aggregates, having gone from being 39% of the mix to just 26% – a trend we previously pointed to here and here.
