Jim O’Brien, President, GAIN, on strengthening the global aggregates industry through collaboration, data sharing and a commitment to sustainability.
GAIN™ is the trade-marked acronym of the Global Aggregates Information Network. Founded in 2010, it is an entirely voluntary network of the major national and regional aggregates associations of the world. The mission of GAIN is to openly share experiences and industry best practices in the interests of promoting the greater sustainability and performance of the aggregates industry globally. GAIN has no commercial interests and vigorously enforces an anti-trust policy.
Starting with just five members in 2010, GAIN now has over 20 members spread across all the six continents, its members representing 75 per cent of global aggregates production of just 39 billion metrictonnes(bnt).
GAIN is uniquely successful in its highly-interactive global membership, thanks to the very positive cooperation of its members. The most recent physical GAIN meeting, its seventh global meeting, was held in Córdoba, Argentina, kindly hosted by the Argentine Association Federación de la Piedra, with most GAIN regions in attendance. The wide-ranging agenda focused on sharing best practice on key industry challenges, and found the industry to be in resilient recovery post-pandemic and poised to address and benefit from future sustainability challenges and opportunities.
The next physical meeting of GAIN is planned for October 19-22, 2025, to be held in Córdoba, Spain, hosted by the Spanish Aggregates Federation. The 2026 physical meeting will be hosted in Shanghai by the China Aggregates Association. In parallel, virtual GAIN meetings are held every two months and are widely attended (including India) across many time zones and these too are marked by lively open exchanges of best practice on specific topics.
Taking stock
One ambition of GAIN is to compile the best annual estimates of aggregates production from data provided by GAIN members, the situation as of April 2025. This data reflects the best estimates available to each region, and while not claiming to be perfect, is probably the best data available anywhere on global aggregates production. The GAIN total of 34.1bnt in 2019 has actually declined to 29.4bnt in 2024, the significant decline of 4.7bnt being due to a combination of the impacts of the pandemic, the economic slowing in China and the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East. When estimates for non-GAIN countries are added (based on their national populations x their estimated tonne/capita), the global totals of 44.0bnt in 2019 has actually declined by 11.4 per cent to 39.0bnt in 2024, the trend being shown in Figure 2. The estimates given for 2025 must at this stage be regarded as preliminary and are very subject to the unpredictable geopolitics now in play, but point towards 2025 being a similar year to 2024 with 39.0bnt global total aggregates production.
The breakdown by region is illustrated in
Figure 1, still dominated by China at 39 per cent, with India coming second at 15 per cent, followed by Europe at 7 per cent and the USA at 6 per cent, these top four comprise 67 per cent of the global demand. Adding in the other GAIN member countries brings the GAIN total to 75 per cent of global production. It is hoped that many more countries will join GAIN in the coming years, bringing its representation towards 100 per cent of the global aggregates industry. The global average is 4.8t/c; for GAIN members the average is 6.5t/c and the non-GAIN average is 2.6t/c. For any country, the demand in tonnes per capita can be empirically related to GDP per capita – or more precisely, the rate of change in GDP/capita –plus upward adjustments for national terrain ruggedness and local
climatic severity.
Looking ahead towards 2030, assuming a positive global geopolitical outlook with resultant economic growth, coupled with the twin demands of population growth and urbanisation, there is a possibility for global demand to reach 40bnt by 2030. These figures demonstrate that aggregates are indeed by far the most used bulk product on the planet, with the industry having an economic value similar to that of the cement sector, both points often overlooked.
Looking specifically at India, as shown in Figure 2, production suffered a significant decline in 2020 during the pandemic, but is now back into strong growth with an estimated 5.9bnt for 2024, hopefully further rising to 6.4bnt in 2025. That will correspond to a demand of 4 tonnes/capita; while still well below that of developed regions, this can portend significant further growth in the years to come. Overall, India should be proud that it is the second largest and fastest growing aggregates market globally. The current growth is being driven principally by massive infrastructural investments in roads, railways, ports and airports; long may it continue.
The author hopes that India will soon benefit from forming a much-needed fully-fledged national aggregates association, similar to those very professionally representing the Indian cement and concrete sectors. A national aggregates association, benefitting from sharing of international best practices within GAIN, can then bring world class excellence to the aggregates industry in India.
About the author:
Jim O’Brien, President, GAIN, is a veteran of the building materials industry. He has spent 39 years at CRH plc, and has spearheaded the formation of the Global Aggregates Information Network (GAIN), a voluntary liaison network of regional and national aggregates associations around the world. More details on www.gain.ie.
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