For the first time in New Zealand, a factory floor has been built using concrete made with 100 per cent manufactured sand.
APD, a New Zealand manufacturer of stormwater and wastewater management solutions, believes in doing good from the ground up.
So, when the company needed to expand its manufacturing capacity to meet rising demand, it began looking for ways to minimise the new factory’s environmental impacts.
“Sustainability is central to APD’s ethos,” APD chief executive officer Neil Prime told Quarry. “For this factory, we looked for every opportunity to reduce our environmental impact, including the materials used in construction.”
Part of this process was to find sustainable materials, particularly when it came to the concrete that would be used in the factory floor.
According to independent think tank Beyond Zero Emissions, cement production is the world’s single biggest industrial cause of carbon pollution, amounting to about eight per cent of total global emissions.
Reducing the amount of cement required in concrete can go a long way to minimising carbon emissions.
However, factory floors have strict strength requirements. To make things more complicated, pouring these concrete slabs is complex. They require precise timing and use of quality materials to meet performance expectations. Traditionally, this has been met by using natural sands processed for use in concrete.
While searching for a more sustainable alternative, Prime heard about a company turning quarry by-product into high quality Engineered Sand that could replace 100 per cent of the natural sand in concrete.
“Engineered Sand immediately caught our attention,” he said. “It’s a more sustainable material and that fits with our ethos of doing good from the ground up.”
APD reached out to the company behind this innovation Kayasand, which began working with APD’s concrete supplier to design and optimise the mix.
Unlike other manufactured sands, a term frequently used to describe the sand-like material made from quarry by-product crusher dust, Kayasand’s Engineered Sand is designed specifically for use in concrete. The company uses a crushing and screening process that precisely controls the shape, size and consistency of the sand grains.
Kayasand concrete trials using 100 per cent Engineered Sand have found a 24 per cent increase in strength and a reduction in cement of up to 15 per cent.
Conset Construction, a specialist when it comes to large pour flat slabs, was thrilled to lead the pour.
“Not only is it the first commercial pour of its kind, it’s high stakes,” Conset Construction operations manager Holona Iddekinge said. “Maintaining a consistency in the mix to ensure a good quality floor is essential.”
Kayasand received a Highly Commended at the 2025 NZ Concrete Construction Awards for the APD factory floor project.
The judges lauded the project’s sustainability credentials and technical execution, reinforcing Kayasand’s role in the future of low-impact construction.
Kayasand currently operates two plants in Waikato, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia and is on track to have to have at least 15 more by 2030.
Kayasand chief executive officer Bram Smith said innovation and new approaches are needed to find the low-carbon solutions of the future.
“Sands that are precision engineered for performance are the future,” Smith said. “They give us much better control of the outcome and are more sustainable than natural sands.” •
For more information, visit kayasand.com
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