New Zealand National Party Incompetence

It's not just New Zealand Labour and the New Zealand First party that are incompetent. It's the National Party as well, which makes NZ vulnerable to say the least as the country lacks effective governance. The parties just mentioned have no right to exist, that's how incompetent they are. But they do exist and the reasons for that are many and varied, but one reason that stands out is the failure of the media and industry groups to hold them to account.

The list of how these parties have failed their country is a long one. The most recent example was Labour/NZ First's oil and gas exploration ban. Sheer incompetence that one. But National did even worse during their previous stint in office. That's what this blog post is about.

I'm talking about cement. Readers may recall the recent outage at Golden Bay Cement's facility near Whangarei and how that impacted NZ's cement supply (Golden Bay Cement is owned by Fletcher Building, their woes continue). This cement plant is the only cement production plant left in NZ. If it goes down as it did this year, the economy is in jeopardy.

Well, the predicament NZ found itself in is because of the inaction of the previous National government, it had nothing to do with Labour as it turns out. 

What National did is it looked the other way, put its fingers in its ears and went 'nah nah nah can't hear a thing' when Holcim announced they were ceasing manufacturing in NZ. That was despite Holcim having the resource and all the consents in place to continue. 

I wrote to the government about this situation, contacted the Manufacturers Association, you name it. Well, the Manufacturers Association understood, they were already on it. But do you think the National government wanted to know? Not likely and I'll tell you why:

They were too thick to understand the importance of cement to an industrialised economy. They're dumb shits. And that's an understatement.

So what happened? Holcim were allowed to close their plant at Westport, and were not required to open a new one. They're allowed to import from Japan or somewhere. Like that makes sense - NOT. Any basic student of microeconmics would know, shipping cement from the other side of the planet when it can come from just down the road is lamebrain. Note, I use the word 'allowed' in this paragraph a lot. That's because cement is a strategic resource and treated that way by sensible countries like the USA and UK. They don't allow any company to just shut down a third of all cement production. They just don't, in the USA or UK any company proposing it would find their assets seized. I'm not kidding.

Why does this cement shut-down impact NZ? Well, it's because the numbers look like this; NZ consumes only about a million tonnes of cement a year. LafargeHolcim has about 2,300 cement facilities producing 280 million tonnes a year. You may notice the size differential (sarcasm). One of their large plants can produce 1-1.3 million tonnes a year, more than all of NZ consumes from all sources whether manufactured locally, imported as clinker and crushed and just imported ready to use.

And this is where it gets really bad. When things are going gang busters, all of this capacity is taken up. That's right, when things recover, NZ will be left swinging in the breeze. And it takes 10 years or so to get another plant up and running properly. What I'm talking about is a potential shut-down of Aotearoa/New Zealand and it's the National party that left NZ so badly exposed. 

ARM Cement

Something I learnt from Twitter; ARM Cement has gone into administration. They're Kenya's second largest cement producer, and have operations in Tanzania and Rwanda as well, on top of minority holdings in South Africa.

http://www.globalcement.com/news/item/7960-nairobi-securities-exchange-suspends-trading-of-arm-cement

Sand Wars

I watched the documentary Sand Wars on al Jazeera recently, it was interesting but ultimately came up short, and that's because the documentary lacked balance and became emotive.

I know something about sand. Some may call me an expert on the subject but I wouldn't go that far, I'd call myself a specialist. That said there are several things to consider about sand and where to find it, how to process it. Sand is critical for construction, the oceans, and our coastlines. We can't have a civilisation without sand and our environment is jeopardised if we extract too much ot it. So what is the answer? That's what I'm going to deal with here:

1. Natural or Man-made?

The above documentary never once considered quarried rock being transformed into sand. They did have someone at an aggregate trade show or conference saying that all the natural deposits of sand and gravel had been taken away. That is nonsense.

There is a rule in the sand business; first find a natural deposit. This can be quite difficult as a lot of factors need to be considered when searching for a suitable extraction pit. Such things as distance to market or end-user, ease with which the resource can be extracted, the physical properties of that resource having a bearing on just how much processing is involved, water sources and so on. But increasingly regulation and the NIMBY effect come into it as well. There is a lot of natural, clean sand out there, you're just not allowed to touch it because of that last factor.

So what now then? You have to manufacture that sand at your already operationally consented rock quarry. This is not an easy exercise and involves complex machinery which can be very expensive. Even when set up the end-product can be of much lesser quality than the natural equivalent. It doesn't have to be, but man is fallible and they don't always get it right.

Is sand running out? The short answer is No.

2. Sand from the Sea or Beach.

This is generally not the answer as salt comes with the sand. Sand dredged from below the sea is not as heavy with salt as beach sand is, but this source of sand still requires further processing, or thorough washing before it can be used in construction. The documentary said that buildings in Tangiers may fall down because they're built with sand from the sea. If the sand is salt ridden then the structures would be weakened over time due to the rusting of the reinforcing steel inside the concrete. The buildings would be fine if that sand had been washed sufficiently or simply came within specification without further processing.

How much sand comes from dredging operations? Much less than you're led to believe. Ships are a pain in the arse and you can't see below the water. Even land based dredging from wet pits or lakes is thwart with difficulty. I've seen the figures on this and sand dredging is still the little bedfellow on the block in terms of the whole.

3. Recycling and Blending.

Not just glass, but concrete can be recycled also. Valuable sand and other aggregates can be re-extracted. This extends the life of existing in-ground resources. But also overlooked is blending the sand. That is, taking some man-made, some natural and maybe some recycled resource and blending them together. A pugmill or similar process can do this most effectively.

4. Concrete

There are few alternatives to this amazing stuff called Portland Cementous Concrete. Our world does not function without it and we have got to learn to manage it. People talking about straw bale houses is not the answer. Yes we can use wood and steel and such but what the Romans knew all along and the rest of the world woke up to in the nineteenth century is that Concrete is the answer. If in doubt concrete it.

If you have a sand deposit and don't know what to do with it, or need help in any way, then please contact me using the contact form on this page. I'm here to help.