On October 9th, the first shipment of sand and gravel from Vancouver Island arrived at the newly-constructed aggregate receiving, storage and distribution terminal owned by Eagle Rock Aggregates and located in the Port of Richmond.
Photo by Joel Williams
By Joel Williams
Published: November, 2007
On October 9th, the first shipment of sand and gravel from Vancouver Island arrived at the newly-constructed aggregate receiving, storage and distribution terminal owned by Eagle Rock Aggregates and located in the Port of Richmond. The Richmond Terminal, which was built with a budget of $27 million, is a staggering 95,000 square-foot facility that is 650 feet long and will handle three types of aggregate used for making concrete: half-inch gravel, quarter-inch gravel, and sand.
According to Bill Terry, General Manager of Eagle Rock’s California operations, the state of California is running a deficit of construction aggregates. The 2006 California Geological Survey by the Department of Conservation clearly shows that aggregate availability is a real issue, Terry said. The study predicts that demand for aggregates in California will reach 13.5 billion tons over the next 50 years, taking into account expected population growth, whereas there are only 4.3 billion tons of permitted resources in the state. By bringing in large quantities of construction aggregates by ship from British Columbia, we are helping to ease this supply constraint.
Quarries are messy and noisy operations with large amounts of heavy equipment and truck traffic. History has shown that people don’t want them close to where they live. Over the years, as quarries near urban developments have been depleted, opening new quarries near the areas where the aggregate is needed has proved difficult. New quarry locations have had to move farther and farther away from developed areas in order to receive operating permits. The effect of this situation has been an increase in the price of the aggregates due to the increase in the cost of shipping to the construction sites.
Polaris Minerals, the parent company of Eagle Rock Aggregates, has identified two quarry sites on Vancouver Island. These sites are located far enough from population centers that they were permitted without any objections. The close location of these sites to tidewater means that the material can be economically loaded onto large bulk carriers for shipment to California. Currently, aggregate is being shipped in from the Orca Quarry, which is a very large deposit of naturally occurring sand and gravel that requires very little crushing to achieve the desired size.
According to Mike Westerlund, Director of Corporate Development with Eagle Rock’s parent company Polaris Minerals, It’s extremely efficient to move material in a very large tonnage ship as compared to individual trucks. We can ship material about a thousand miles by freighter, which carries 79,200 tons, for roughly the same cost as trucking it 25 miles in the Bay Area. So as the new quarries are being permitted and opening 50, 75 to 100 miles out of the city, we’re in a very good position.
When asked about the environmental aspects of shipping on water versus trucks, Westerlund responded, I think what we’re seeing is it’s more energy efficient to move material by large freighter. Think about one of those big Panamax freighters as being approximately 3,000 truckloads. We use less fuel per ton of aggregate moved and produce fewer emissions, particularly in urban areas. This advantage becomes greater as the trucking distances become longer and longer.
Large companies that need high quality sand and gravel in the Bay Area, such as Shamrock Materials and Cemex, have realized that they need to receive materials by ship to maintain their long-term guaranteed supply. For this reason, both of these companies have opened marine terminals in the Bay Area to receive aggregate products by ship, and Eagle Rock Aggregates has signed long-term supply agreements with both companies.
In order to maximize energy efficiency and fully capitalize on the economies of scale available to them, Eagle Rock will bring fully-laden freighters down from Vancouver Island. With a full load, the vessel draws about 45 feet. The only local terminal that can handle that depth is the Port of Oakland, which is a container ship port and not set up to offload aggregate. The remaining port sites in the bay, including the Port of Richmond, are shallow-water berths. In order to access these sites, the ship must be lightened. This is where the use of Panamax, or self-unloading freighters, becomes so important. The ships used by Eagle Rock are equipped with their own set of conveyors to unload themselves, depositing sand and gravel onto receiving terminals, or into barges, at 4,500 tons per hour. After the fully-laden ships arrive in the bay they are met by a fleet of barges belonging to Shamrock. The freighter quickly offloads material to the barges while anchored in the Bay, and in the process lightens the ship, so that it draws less water and can then move into the port terminals. The barges are then towed up the Petaluma River to the Landing Way Depot, where the products are distributed locally.
An additional reason to import this particular aggregate from Vancouver Island is the quality of the materials. The quality of the aggregate being shipped in from the Polaris Minerals Canadian quarry meets the high standards set by the California Department of Transportation for use in the Bay Bridge project, meaning that it is especially strong when made into concrete. As a matter of fact, the Orca Quarry is one of only nine quarries that are certified to Caltrans specs and the only one outside of California. Plus, with their new terminal located at the Port of Richmond, Eagle Rock Aggregates now has a distribution center conveniently located just down the road from the Bay Bridge.
The Eagle Rock Richmond Terminal is 95,000 square feet and 650 feet long. Photo by Joel Williams
