State Moves to Protect Quarries as Demand Surges

Two seperate plans have been proposed for quarries in Victoria as government and industry work to secure construction material supply.

The Victorian Government has proposed new planning controls to protect sand resource sites at Lang Lang and Trafalgar in south-east Victoria and a stone quarry near Oaklands Junction, north of Melbourne.

Those controls would designate the sites as Strategic Extractive Resource Areas, preventing them from being used for development purposes, and handing the construction sector a secure supply of sand, rock and gravel for new homes and infrastructure, it said. 

Local environmental and cultural heritage, other existing land uses and transport network access will be a part of the designation process.

Victoria is expected to have be home to more than 10 million people by 2051, and the increasing demand for housing and infrastructure is driving the need for new quarries. 

Quarry production within the state has grown by 14 per cent during the past three years. Annual production in that period was a record—73.6 million tonnes of rock, sand and gravel. 

The extractive resources industry adds about $1.3 billion to the state economy a year at the quarry gate. 

▲ The Victorian Government is keen to ensure secure access to construction materials to meet predicted increases in demand.

Submissions are now open for the government’s proposed planning controls for the sites.

Meanwhile, major construction materials supplier Holcim has submitted a proposal to the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning to expand a quarry into a neighbouring area.

Under the proposal the Colac Quarry at 76 Potters Road, Ondit, 153km south-west of Melbourne, would expand into the Northern Development Area (NDA) at 170 Ondit-Warrion Road.

Holcim’s application said it planned to use existing infrastructure and minimise the development footprint with no fixed buildings to be erected on the NDA site. 

It also said that the overall quarry capacity of the existing and proposed sites would not change from about 300,000 tonnes of product a year, produced at 1000 tonnes a day on average.