Over the past decade, the Belt and Road Initiative has evolved into a pivotal engine for global connectivity and infrastructure investment. As transcontinental projects in transportation, energy, and urban development accelerate, construction aggregates—an indispensable foundational material, are both witnessing and enabling a profound reshaping of the global construction landscape and its industrial value chains. This article examines the new landscape, emerging challenges, and unfolding opportunities for the sand and aggregates industry in the context of the Belt and Road.
Since its launch in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has expanded to encompass 150+ countries and international organizations across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, becoming a key platform for global economic cooperation and infrastructure connectivity.
Within this trajectory, infrastructure construction has created a pronounced, inelastic demand for construction aggregates. As the foundational material for highways, railways, ports, and large-scale urban complexes, aggregates are direct beneficiaries of the rapid upswing in global infrastructure investment.
Aggregates are the world’s largest by volume and most widely consumed construction material. According to UNEP, global aggregate output is approximately 44 billion tonnes, with major producers and consumers including China, the United States, India, Turkey, and others. Yet the sand and aggregate production industry remains highly localized: over 90% of supply serves domestic markets, and cross‑border trade accounts for less than 5%. This is driven by several defining characteristics of the sector:
The Belt and Road spans countries and regions with diverse development stages, resource endowments, and policy environments, resulting in a heterogeneous aggregates market landscape. Key regional profiles are as follows:
Urbanization has accelerated in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines, underpinning robust infrastructure spending. However, tensions between resource extraction and ecological protection are intensifying. Restrictions on coastal and river sand mining are pushing the sector toward greener extraction and increased adoption of manufactured sand.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan possess abundant aggregates resources across vast territories but have relatively weak processing and equipment capabilities. The rollout of Central Asia transport corridors and energy transmission projects is expanding local markets. Inflows of foreign capital and international technology are pivotal to industry modernization.
Demand for aggregates remains elevated. Stringent requirements on raw material quality and environmental standards are driving widespread adoption of green mining practices and intelligent equipment.
Countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria confront acute infrastructure deficits. Investment in roads, railways, and ports is growing at roughly 13%, underscoring sizable market potential for aggregates. Logistics bottlenecks and limited local supply capacity are catalyzing foreign-local partnerships and supply chain upgrading.
India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan exhibit dense populations, rapid urbanization, and strong infrastructure demand. India’s aggregates demand reached 640 million tonnes in 2023, up 8% year on year. Nonetheless, policy volatility and supply chain inefficiencies continue to constrain sector development.
Prior to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the global aggregates supply chain was characterized by extreme localization:
Aggregates are high-density, low-value commodities; overland logistics can account for more than 40% of delivered cost. As a result, over 90% of transactions occur within roughly 150 km of the quarry, and cross-border trade represents less than 1% of global output.
Emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Africa often face “demand without supply” due to lagging local mine development, while parts of Central Asia and the Middle East, though resource-rich, rely on imports of high-quality manufactured sand because of gaps in processing technology.
This legacy model, predominantly local self-sufficiency with minimal cross-border flows, has increasingly revealed efficiency bottlenecks under the BRI’s surge in large-scale infrastructure demand.
Leveraging geographic proximity and resource complementarity, BRI economies are building regional aggregates “supply clusters.” Examples include Turkey supplying the Balkans and Kazakhstan serving neighboring Central Asian markets. These networks, underpinned by geographic adjacency, complementary resources, and policy coordination, help stabilize intra-regional supply and ease single-country pressure.
The BRI is catalyzing global capital and technology to converge on aggregates along the route, forming three typical cooperation models: foreign participation in local quarry development, end-to-end value chain collaboration, and local–foreign joint ventures. Such partnerships address funding and technology gaps in resource countries while opening incremental markets for investors. Deloitte (2023) notes that cross-border aggregates projects along the BRI deliver average returns 2–3 percentage points higher than traditional sectors.
For mega cross-border projects, railways, ports, industrial parks, countries are piloting “project-dedicated supply chains,” embedding aggregates supply into full lifecycle project management to enhance efficiency and assurance.
Investors from China, Türkiye, the Gulf, and Europe are accelerating deployments in BRI countries, directly investing in quarries and processing plants or aggregating resources via project-based partnerships.
Large infrastructure programs increasingly adopt EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) and BOT (build–operate–transfer) models. Aggregates supply is planned as part of one-stop solutions, enabling centralized procurement and efficient delivery.
Leading global manufacturers in rock crushing and screening, alongside environmental technology firms, are entering emerging markets, advancing green, digital, and intelligent upgrades across the local industry.
The BRI is propelling the global aggregates sector from a closed, siloed system toward openness and collaboration, lifting overall efficiency and sustainability.
Under the continued momentum of the Belt and Road Initiative, the global sand and aggregate industry is at a pivotal moment of transformation and upgrade. Over the next decade the sand and aggregate will accelerate change around three core directions,green production, intelligent upgrades and deepened global collaboration, shaping a more sustainable, efficient and inclusive international industrial ecosystem. This evolution not only concerns the survival and competitiveness of the aggregates industry itself, but also underpins coordinated progress in global infrastructure delivery and ecological protection.
Driven together by green technologies, intelligent tools and global cooperation, the aggregates industry of the future will reliably supply sustainable materials for Belt and Road infrastructure, while contributing to climate action and narrowing development gaps worldwide.
— focus on regional potential and stringent compliance and environmental risk control
— upgrade processes and supply chains; integrate into global project chains
— meet differentiated demand and strengthen local services
The Belt and Road Initiative presents a historic opportunity for infrastructure development and a broad stage for the global aggregates industry to optimize resources, deepen technical cooperation and accelerate green transformation. Industry stakeholders must intensify dialogue, deepen partnerships and share responsibilities to realize mutual gains and build an open, green, efficient and inclusive new paradigm for the global sand and aggregate sector.