Saudi Arabia imports sand — despite being a country dominated by desert, the sand of the Arabian Peninsula is too smooth and round for use in construction concrete, because thousands of years of wind erosion have polished the grains to a shape that does not bond well with cement, and most construction sand must be imported from countries like Australia

In 2023, Saudi Arabia paid approximately $140,000 to import construction-grade sand from Australia. The figure is small in dollar terms, but the trade flow it represents is the visible part of a much larger phenomenon. Saudi Arabia, a country dominated by some of the largest sand deserts on Earth, cannot use the sand in its [...] The post Saudi Arabia imports sand — despite being a country dominated by desert, the sand of the Arabian Peninsula is too smooth and round for use in construction conc