Excerpt:
Huge global demand is fuelling illegal trade in high-grade sand, one reason for a gap in export and import data.
On March 17, more than 120 tons of sand packed into drums was loaded onto the Basle Express, a container freight ship more than three soccer fields long. The ship was docked in one of America’s major ports, Savannah, Georgia, in the Southeast region of the country.
The shipment itself was not remarkable — except for how it is emblematic of the international sand trade, highlighting the type of sand that attracts foreign buyers, the countries that are buying and those that are selling.
The sand loaded onto the Basle Express was not just any kind, but silica, highly sought after because it is used for making electronics, glass and metals. Higher grades of sand for industrial use such as silica are more lucrative. The purer the silica, the more it is prized. Silica accounted for more than 80 percent of the more than $1.1 billion in sand shipped around the world last year, according to United Nations Comtrade data.
The sand on the Basle Express was leaving the United States, which, according to United Nations data, is one of the world’s major exporters of sand,. The U.S. Geological Survey, in a January 2023 report, attributed high foreign demand for U.S. sand and gravel to its desirability and high quality “and to the advanced processing techniques” used for grinding rock and gravel into industrial grade sand.
In Savannah, the company shipping the silica was the North American division of Sibelco, among the largest sand concerns in the world. The Belgium firm is more than 150 years old, and got its start mining quartz in Flanders. It has grown in large part by acquiring rivals. Sibelco now operates in 32 countries with almost $2.2 billion in revenue last year.
Sibelco is America’s leading exporter of silica, quartz and similar higher-grade sands, accounting for almost a third of the shipments out of the United States in the past three years, according to U.S. export shipping records maintained by the commercial transportation data firm Panjiva…
