News | 12 June

CCF advocates to protect the continuity of supply of construction materials to support delivery of major infrastructure projects.

As we continue to “raise our voice” for and on behalf of CCF members on key issues aligned to our 2018/20 strategic action plan, a series of media activities have been undertaken this afternoon to promote an efficient supply of construction material as a critical enabler to support delivery of over $100bn of major infrastructure projects either under construction, or in the Budget forward estimates, in our growing state.

In concert with the Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia (CCAA), CCF Victoria is calling for action to improve the permit approval processes for the establishment of up to 15 new quarries to deliver an estimated shortfall of 2.3 billion tonnes of extractive materials over the next 30 year period. This is approximately 34% of Victoria’s requirements during this period, that will need to be sourced from new quarries.

In order to deliver the 60+ million tonnes per annum of high quality quarry products and the additional cement and concrete needed, there needs to be faster approvals for quarry and sand reserves.  Currently, every Victorian requires 8 tonnes of stone, sand and gravel every year to build the roads, houses and other infrastructure we need, with the highways constructed using an estimated 14,000 tonnes of aggregate per kilometre.

Emphasis was placed on the challenges confronting our civil construction industry, including the current skills and capacity gap, and the consequence of not expediting planning and approval processes for new quarries with local government.  Our key concern remains the slow pace of government reform to approve new reserves in response to ever increasing infrastructure demand. The key message to Government is that based on current projections, there is an increased risk of supply shortages of quarry materials, that will lead to increased project costs.

The CCF, CCAA and its respective members, welcome the opportunity to work with Government and relevant stakeholders to ensure there’s an adequate materials supply chain in place to meet future demand.

For more information about this topic and more, please contact our Team on 1300 DIAL CCF.

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