The Changing Face Of Aggregates

While an accurate number reflecting the quantity of recycled aggregates produced in the UK each year is elusive, all indicators suggest the trend is upward. In light of this MQR decided to look into the birth of the material, the drivers leading growth and to ask some of those on the supply side how the market is changing. In the process we found a material almost matching primary in terms of price but an undercurrent of concern over future feedstock that is leading a handful of operators to stress test the Environment Agency and pull out inert waste from landfill and restoration to extract the aggregates.

Sales of aggregates number around 274million tonnes a year, according to Quarry Products Association (QPA) figures, with about 70million tonnes coming from either secondary or recycled sources.

The same figures, published in its annual Sustainability Report, also suggest that among its members the percentage share recycled and secondary material has of the total market has risen by a percentage point each year for the past three years and sits currently at 26%.

It is a sizable share, if it is accurate. Sadly, as with most numbers covering the recycled aggregates sector, it is best to see them as a very smudged rule of thumb rather than clear and accurate data.

The QPA figures account for information from around 24% of its membership, or around 71% of major UK quarry operations. Because five of its members are the big quarry players and major cement firms the coverage is good.

But the story of recycled aggregates is much bigger than just quarries. And it is from here that the returns-versus-coverage equation breaks down when considering numbers.
Capita Symonds figures for the Department for Communities and Local Government estimated recycled construction, demolition and excavation arisings in England in 2005 numbered 88.63million tonnes.

Targeting crushing and screening operators with questionnaires, the authors managed a useful response rate of 21.5% from 1,276 forms. But compared with the Welsh survey, this figure is a sign of accuracy.

After Welsh rural development minister Jane Davidson had praised the Faber Maunsell figures as a sign her policies were working, the authors admitted to MQR the data were based on a response rate of just 15%!

Moves are afoot to change this, however, with both the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Welsh Assembly Government looking at better ways of improving reporting.

But for now it is not unfair to say that no-one knows for sure how much recycled material is being produced and used across the UK.

But given recent motivators there is a good chance that it is more than official figures suggest.

The landfill tax and aggregates levy hikes in April, increased pressure for construction to target sustainability – including a 50% reduction in C&D waste going to landfill by 2012 – and the Highways And Utilities Committee (HAUC) sending out pressure in Advice Note One for the use of alternative reinstatement materials (ARMs) in streetworks, can only work in favour of pushing figures higher.

WRAP estimates that recycled materials could account for 30% of England’s aggregate supply by 2010/2011. However, WRAP technical advisor John Barritt admits figures after this point are difficult to predict.

“The more you measure the waste you create the more you seek to save the money you are wasting. There is bound to be a decline in material to process. If construction continues to grow – which it should – then tonnages may remain constant but the percentage may shift slightly back to virgin aggregate,” he told MQR.

But for now the trend is still upward. And with £9million in capital grants for processing infrastructure already having been given out by WRAP – with demand outstripping supply – and with news in the current consultation on the aggregates levy sustainability fund from Defra (see front page) that WRAP is to receive £3.5million a year for the next three years to further fund its aggregates-related activities, capacity can only grow further.

The face of aggregate supply is changing. Primary material will always demand the lion’s share of the business, but few would deny the market for recycled aggregates is coming of age, even if its birth date is disputed.

Some, such as Barritt, feel the main drive to recycle aggregates stems from the introduction of the Landfill Tax in 1996, with the demolition firms and waste companies seizing the initiative.

Barritt: “Once these firms realized that if they did recycling properly they could make money it all changed. And the plant used to process quarry material began to be modified and found a new market.

“This is reflected in Hillhead. It used to be a quarrying show. Now it is all mobile crushers and machines that allow the processing of stickier materials. This all feeds from the Landfill Tax,” he told MQR.

However, while Alan Sheppard, director of recycling at Tarmac, feels that the tax took the practice of aggregate recycling nationwide, its roots are to be found elsewhere.

Sheppard: “In London landfill space was disappearing fast in the 1980s pushing up the costs. Getting inert material across the city to dump was getting an expensive business. So those using landfill sought to save money by reprocessing material,” he said.

Adam Day, contracts director at Day Aggregates says his London-based recycling operations are processing foundation concrete from buildings constructed in the early 1980s that are themselves made with recycled concrete: “It must have been going on earlier,” he says.

However, the Landfill Tax certainly focused people’s attention nationally and aided the regeneration of smaller skip hire firms.

Sheppard: “By the mid-1990s waste regulations were starting to tighten up increasing costs. This was leading to many smaller skip companies going out of business. The Landfill Tax gave them a way back in and segregation of waste became more widespread.”

As the growth in recycling began to level off, another shock to the system came in the form of the Aggregates Levy in 2002. Staunchly opposed by every quarry firm in the country, it was pitched as a major motivator to reduce quarrying and grow recycling.

However, the latest levy figures from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMCR) suggest that primary aggregate sales are rising, not falling. Many, such as Barritt, feels Government focus should have been on the Landfill Tax if recycling was its goal.

“They should never have done the Levy,” he says. “A higher cost on dumping is what was needed. This brings the impetus to recycle as is being proven with this year’s rise in the landfill rate.”

But it is not all bad, he feels. The drive behind recycling aggregates had levelled off. The Levy worked to raise the profile, again ushering in the current flurry of activity.

However, Sheppard believes that from an economic viewpoint the Levy initially worked against the wider use of recycled. Suddenly, those involved saw they had a product and not a recovered waste.

“It put the sales of recycled back a bit,” says Sheppard. “Before this point it was a case of simply avoiding disposal. The Levy on primary gave the waste a value on top of removing landfill costs. In was a key change in the way C&D waste was viewed.”

And their view was supported by a raft of initiatives pushing the waste hierarchy up the agenda and opening the way for the wider use of recycled aggregates.

The Highways Agency changed its specifications for material used in bound and unbound layers, while in 2003 the Sustainable Buildings Taskforce was launched.

A year later the European standards for aggregates came into effect in focusing on a product’s fitness-for-purpose rather than discriminating by material. A year later the Government’s Sustainable Procurement Taskforce was launched.

And as central government became more preoccupied with sustainability so did local government. This in turn sent pressure down the line to think more about the materials being specified in projects.

Hampshire County Council, for example, launched its More from Less campaign. It seeks to cut unnecessary primary extraction and look at how waste can be used as an asset. Raymond Brown Minerals and Recycling took part in the scheme in 2003. Environmental and development director Steve Cole says it was the drive from Hampshire council that helped convince the company to expand its recycling operations.

Its Rookery Farm landfill was opened to service the construction of the M27 in the 1980s. The firm has been recycling at the site since 1995. It started with the crushing and screening of concrete. Today it has a state-of-the-art aggregate washing plant on the south coast.

Raymond Brown is a good example of the shift in aggregates supply. The company has evolved to offer earthmoving and muck-away, building services, contracting, landfill, and recycling. It also operates three sand quarries, has an application in for a gravel pit and has just bought a skip operation in Purbeck.

Most of these once separate arms were last year brought together under the company name Raymond Brown Minerals and Recycling. It is a matter of integrating the different functions to offer a wider service to customers, says Cole.

“We can use our recycled aggregates in our construction work. We are currently helping build the Olympic sailing centre in Portsmouth and the library at Bournemouth University,” he says.

Many others are also integrating. While quarry firms invest in asphalt and concrete plants to access higher value markets and global cement firms buy up the major quarry firms to control downstream business, so companies across the new face of aggregate supply attempt to close-the-loop and hold materials in their own businesses.

Kent-based FM Conway is a good example of this. It offers civil engineering, highways maintenance, paving, surfacing and a range of recycled materials.

These are types 1 and 2 granular sub-base, 6F1 and 6F2 capping and bulk fill materials, -20mm crushed asphalt, 0–1mm fine sand, 0–4mm coarse sand, 4–20mm aggregate, 20–30mm aggregate and 0mm-20mm blended ballast. They are all used in its contracting work.

FM Conway also uses mobile concrete batching vehicles designed to manufacture any grade of concrete or mortar from its recycled aggregates at the point of delivery.

While the new market in former waste has opened doors for demolition and excavation firms, small quarry companies with an eye to waste have also benefited.

A good example of an SME quarry firm taking this route is Surrey-based J&J Franks. It had a trommel and picking station installed in late January to process skip waste to save losing materials to its inert licensed landfill site.

MD Peter Crate says the main driver is to reduce the weight of waste to lower landfill costs and to produce valuable recycled material such as soils, aggregates, metal, wood chip, paper and cardboard.

The wood is being chipped and sent to Fibre Fuel to become energy cubes for power stations along with paper and cardboard residue. The soils enter landfill or are blended and sold as product along with the aggregates and metal.

He feels shifting market demand is taking quarry firms full circle. In the past most primary aggregate producers would have had a waste arm. Growing landfill insurance liabilities motivated many of the large players to move out, helping fuel the rise of firms such as WRG and Biffa in the UK.

However, the small operators who have maintained their own waste processing to feed inert for restoration are stealing a march, says Crate.

“Twenty years ago the large quarry firms used to collect C&D waste. Now everyone is specialized. The quarry firms stick to what they know as do the landfill firms.

“But the smaller, more nimble, quarry companies with specialist C&D waste removal are in the perfect position to secure material and process it.”

However, Sheppard feels that while the smaller firms can react quicker, this doesn’t mean that the big players are dead in the water in terms of aggregates recycling. Quite the opposite.

Tarmac has 54 recycling sites across the UK – five years ago the number was 10 – and was the first of the big-five UK-based quarry firms to make aggregates recycling a core business.

Sheppard simply smiles at the charge often repeated that the large quarry firms aren’t making any money out of recycling and that it is just a PR exercise: “Oh, we have been making money for the past six to seven years out of recycling,” he says.

Tarmac is even taking fill material out of some of its partially restored sites and processing the aggregate out before refilling.

Sheppard: “You need to be careful in terms of the restoration plan to ensure you are still on target but the upshot is a better quality, finer graded soil that ends up in the ground, so it is good all-round.”

And Tarmac is not alone in securing material from this source. High spec washing plants are turning up at a few UK landfill sites. Hadley’s near Reading is a key example.

The skip hire firm is based on an old paragraph 9A exemption borrow pit. It is filled with four years’ worth of inert material. The Environment Agency appears to be on its side.

The firm hasn’t started processing the material yet but plans to start very soon. Hadley technical and compliance manager Will Fleming: “There are not many firms doing this around the UK and we were keen to be one of them. It makes sense both in terms of depleting landfill space and sustainable construction materials,” he says.

But as well as freeing up void space, the move to mine landfill comes from a question mark hanging over material supply in future. A problem that hasn’t been helped by 9A exemptions, says Sheppard.

“We should not have allowed some inert exemptions such as golf courses,” he says. “This has taken material away that could have been recycled. And there is already a general feeling that getting hold of material is becoming more difficult.”

Others agree. And with high-end recycled material already fetching a price similar, if not equal to, its virgin counterpart, some point out that a drive towards setting minimum targets for recycled material may not be in the UK’s best interests.

Sheppard feels it is a matter of sustainability: “It needs to be about life cycle analysis. If you have to transport recycled aggregates a long distance to site but you have a quarry on the doorstep with suitable material then it doesn’t make sense to demand a minimum of recycled be used,” he says.

In fact, he sees blended products such as the Day Group’s primary/recycled Ecoblend aggregate or Tarmac’s in-house material taking a larger share of the market as conditions shift.

The Day Group’s Adam Day, however, sees the next major shift in recycled aggregates supply coming from hydraulically bound materials or HBMs (see Hunting linear quarry next page).

The company is in the process of producing its own HBM and sees in-situ stabilisation as the next boom growth area. It is just waiting for others to catch up.

“Currently, the Highways And Utilities Committee’s approach to the use of recycled aggregates is where we all were about 10years ago. There was only one useful comment in its recent update of streetworks guidance and that was that local authorities not specifiying recycled for projects need to give reasons for refusal.

“But HBM will be the driving force for future recycled aggregate use. We just need to educate the engineers and authorities first,” he says.

Only time will tell if he is right. But with a lot of others also investing heavily in HBM – including Tarmac, which already has soperations active in the UK – he is certainly on to something.

Offering the ability to reuse arisings as stable foundations and even having the capacity to lock in contaminents, it is easy to see HBMs coming of age and becoming the next stage in the changing face of aggregates.