Saudi Arabia, which has sheltered the largest deserts in the world on its territory (editor's note: 95% of its territory is desert), has a problem with sand for construction. This has forced developers to import sand from distant Australia. They import tens of trillions of tons of the "material" annually, paying millions of dollars for something they have in abundance.
The reason for importing so much sand is related to the country's ambitious plans to build futuristic cities literally "in the middle of nowhere".
Sand from the Saudi desert is completely unusable for construction due to its shape. Winds that have been grinding it down for millennia have made each grain perfectly round – microscopic, smooth balls. When you try to make concrete with this sand, the grains behave like bullets – they slide over each other and don’t bond, causing the concrete to crumble, experts say. It’s like trying to build a castle out of ping-pong balls instead of bricks.
In contrast, Australian sea sand has sharp, jagged grains shaped by waves and coastal rocks. These edges interlock perfectly, creating strong, durable concrete. For its megaprojects – the $500 billion city of NEOM, man-made islands, skyscrapers in Riyadh – Saudi Arabia cannot use even a gram of its own sand and must import millions of tons from abroad.
This situation creates the strangest international trade in the world: huge cargo ships transport Australian sand across three oceans to a country that is literally drowning in sand. The ultimate irony is that while the Saudis pay for foreign sand, they sell their own oil to build the cities of the future with materials that nature gave them in an unsuitable form. Saudi Arabia shows us that it is not quantity that matters, but quality - and that sometimes what you have in abundance is not what you need...
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