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.

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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.

The Basle Express was bound for China, one of the world’s leading importers of sand, where lower grades are destined for construction, including buildings and roads, while higher grades are employed in the technology sectors, including glass and electronics. 

But for all that is known about the international sand trade from shipping manifests, corporate records and United Nations trade data, there is a lot that remains a secret.

“The whole supply chain of this sands market is not well known,” said Arnaud Vander Velpen, a sand industry and data analytics officer for the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Resource Information Database network, designed to monitor environmental issues facing the planet. One of the difficulties, he said, is that in many countries, “it is either unregulated or it is unmonitored.” 

There are efforts to better understand the full extent of sand mining by using satellite imagery and other technology to track sand dredging off the coasts of some countries, and to track building and road construction as an indicator of sand consumption, he said. Those methods add to reported figures, but do not give a full picture of the sand trade.

Vanessa Lamb, now an associate professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, co-authored a 2018 report that pointed out the gaps in sand imports and export figures, underscoring that not all countries are accurately reporting the figures.

A key example she cited was Singapore, the small island state that relies on sand for construction to make up for land lost to erosion, and to even expand its area through reclamation and build artificial islands. Singapore’s area has increased by 25 percent since it gained independence in 1965.

“A place like Singapore is going to actually be importing large amounts of sand and gravel because they do not have that in their territory,” said Lamb in an interview.

Nearby Myanmar and Cambodia are among the countries that reported shipping sand to Singapore when Lamb conducted the review. But Singapore reported getting far more sand from those countries than what the origin countries reported. 

“You have a huge differential with what Myanmar reports that they export, and you have the same sort of scenario for Cambodia,” Lamb said. “Singapore is reporting 40 times the amount of sand than they're getting from Cambodia.”

“When you are relying on countries self-reporting the amounts, you can start to see how the discrepancies emerge in the region in terms of the accounting for sand,” she added.

Discrepancies like this continue. An examination of the United Nations Comtrade data for 2022 shows that the reported import and export figures do not add up  for the world market. As in the example above, Singapore reports importing far more sand than other countries report exporting to the country. 

In 2022, United Nations records documented that countries around the world exported $1.28 billion worth of sand. But import records show only $1.12 billion coming in. The discrepancy of more than $161 million is almost all for lower grade sands, not higher quality industrial sands like silica. Many nations reported no imports, including Singapore.

In 2021, Malaysia reported shipping $32.9 million worth of sand to Singapore. But Singapore said it actually imported more than ten times that amount — $350.7 million. Figures for 2022 have  not yet been reported.

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In addition to doubts about how accurately countries report sand imports and exports, shippers have falsified manifests on the origin of sand on vessels. In 2020, the United States raised concerns about shipments, especially those involving sanctioned nations like Venezuela, Iran and North Korea. 

“Authorities have found that sanctions evaders have falsified shipping documentation, [with sand among the leading goods that are given fake papers] to disguise their origin,” the U.S. Treasury reported, as part of its efforts to prevent illicit trade.

Separately, U.S. Treasury officials reached a $1.1 million settlement agreement that year with a shipping company that hauled sand for a sanctioned Burmese company bound for Singapore. Among the details in the case is that shipping officials at one point pressured a ship captain to falsify the details of the seller of the sand.

The international sand trade is also facing political and regulatory pressures.

In August, China banned natural sands exports to neighboring Taiwan as part of increased political tensions between the two countries. Today, Indonesia and Malaysia tightly regulate sand exports. Makueni County in Kenya has also clamped down on exports. Illegal sand mining operations do not report their illicit shipments across borders.  

UN Comtrade data shows that the international sand shipping industry has not fully reached  pre-pandemic levels. The peak in the past decade was in 2018, at $1.7 billion.

Still, those figures are a fraction of the global sand business. Together with crushed stone, it is known as the aggregates industry, estimated to be worth more than half a trillion dollars.

A key reason for this is that sand — especially lower grades — remains largely a domestic product. Most sand is mined and used within a country because the profit margins are thinner for sand that is used to replenish beaches or make cement. 

While there are exceptions — like beach sand shipped down from Canada to California — domestic sand suppliers are generally able to meet demand and sell at lower prices without adding long-distance transportation costs.  

Jason WIlett, an analyst for the U.S. Geological Survey who specializes in tracking the sand industry, adds some insight. According to him, in the United States, if this sand needs to be trucked more than 50 miles, it is usually not worth it.