Sand Supplies Pty Ltd
Producers of high-quality washed sand, for the commercial & construction industry.
Sand Supplies Pty Ltd is an independent privately owned company established in 2010. Sand Supplies has three sites in the Westernport region Victoria, at Glen Forbes, Grantville and The Gurdies.
In 2013, Sand Supplies acquired the “sand” assets controlled by Donmix Concrete, comprising a coarse sand pit at Grantville and a sand washing operation at The Gurdies.
Both sites are located on Crown Land historically reserved for sand and gravel extraction, in the case of Grantville, the area was gazetted in 1921. With the land reserved, it was prevented from being cleared for agriculture or used for other purposes.
Both sites are now surrounded by remnant vegetation resulting in being “landlocked” and prevented from any expansion. The sand from the Grantville site was imported to The Gurdies and processed to produce washed sand.
During 2013, Sand Supplies commenced the development of the fine sand deposit at Glen Forbes.
The fine sand quarried at Glen Forbes was imported to The Gurdies and blended with the coarser material to improve the grading of the washed sand to produce an ideal concrete sand.
To meet increasing demand, the modest plant at the Gurdies was upgraded to increase the production of concrete sand from 80,000 up to 300,000 tonnes/annum.
The Gurdies upgrade included increased washing capacity combined with water clarification, slimes thickening and filtration systems to efficiently recover and recycle process water and dewater slimes to produce a filter cake.
Filter cake and oversize material were used to backfill the quarry void to create a safe and stable landform in preparation for final site rehabilitation.
By 2019, the filling of the void space at the Gurdies was approaching completion. With further demand for construction materials to service the State Governments “Big Build”, and no prospect for expansion, it became apparent operations at The Gurdies site were coming to an end.
The decision was made to build new, significantly larger sand processing operations at the Glen Forbes site.
Development at Glen Forbes; building a new multi-million-dollar processing plant – using best practice to produce concrete sand.
The Glen Forbes operation is situated on over 250 acres of land that was historically cleared for cattle grazing. Planning for the development of a new processing plant began in 2015.
With quarrying already occurring at the site since 2013, space was created next to the pit for the construction of a new plant and associated infrastructure. Construction of the new plant commenced in early 2020, just as the Covid pandemic took hold.
Availability of materials and labor, delays in delivery and increased costs proved challenging; the new plant was completed late 2022 with commissioning in December and full production in January 2023. Today, the plant is capable of consistently producing 300 tonnes/hour of washed concrete sand – over 600,00 tonnes/year. The fine sand is quarried within the site and transported to the processing plant using hydraulic excavator and articulated dump trucks.
Similar to The Gurdies operation, a percentage of coarse sand is blended with the finer Glen Forbes material to produce the ideal grading for blended concrete sand. Course sand from the Grantville quarry is similarly quarried and transported via road trucks to the plant. At the plant fine and coarse raw material are tipped into two independent drive over bins. Belt feeders with scales are used to regulate the feed from each bin and blend them onto a common conveyor at the required ration. The blended raw material is dry scalped to remove large lumps using a finger grizzly and discharged into a boil box to generate a slurry. A horizontal wet screen is used to rinse the sand and remove oversize 6.7 mm.
Hydrocyclones are used to “wash” the sand removing all clay and fine silts < 75 microns. The washed sand is dewatered on screens then conveyed to a radial stockpile with a 40,000-tonne capacity for storage and final drainage ahead of sales. A subsoil drainage system recovers excess water which is also recycled for reuse in the wash process. The effluent generated by washing is dosed with flocculant and treated using a thickener; clean water is recovered instantly and stored in a tank at the plant to be recycled for reuse in the wash process.
Clay and fine silt solids and removed from the circuit and stored in a mixer tank to be further treated by filtration using belt filter presses; the clay and fine silt are reduced to a dense “filter cake”. Water recovered from the filtration process is also treated by the thickener ensuring almost complete recovery of all process water in a “closed loop”. The filter cake, along with oversize and lumps are discharged onto a common waste conveyor and transported directly to backfill the pit void.
The sand produced is used throughout the Bass Coast and Cardinia Shires, as well as being distributed to the Mornington Peninsuand the South-East corridor to the Melbourne CBD.
Sand sourced and distributed from the operations have been used in major construction projects in the Bass Coast Shire, includithe Wonthaggi desalination plant, Wonthaggi wind turbines, highways and roads, municipal offices, theatres and cultural centrsports fields, hospitals, colleges, schools and preschools and most houses built in and around the Bass Coast Shire.
Sand Supplies directly employs over 20 local staff, all living within the local area, as well as numerous transport subcontractors, contractors and consultants.
Sand Supplies has been a CMPA Member since early 2023 and recently presented at the Sand Rehabilitation Workshop on Re-vegetation Management. They were also represented at last month’s Annual Dinner.
“Sand Supplies welcomes the support from CMPA throughout our membership.”
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