Providing sands to a range of targeted gradings in a moist or kiln-dried form is the focus of the River Sands industrial sands business. After commencing operations in 1974, the business and our equipment has constantly evolved to provide specifically graded sands and gravels to meet the needs of many industries.
The wide variety of specific grades of sand is made possible due to six reasons.
Firstly, the unique grading of the sands in the Eagleby sand deposit. The sands are worn from an old river course and consist of mainly siliceous gradings of up to 1.7mm. This ancient deposit is dramatically different from the alluvial sand processing operations in the Jacobs Well area which typically consist of beach sands or fine sands with a maximum sizing of 0.4mm.
The sands are dredged with mud and gravels removed at a trommel and then pumped over approximately one kilometre to our sand separation plant at Carbrook. This purpose-designed equipment separates the sand into three gradings. Fine sand or minus 0.3mm; a medium sand to specifically meet USGA top dressing requirements of 0.3 -0.6mm and a wonderful coarse sand ranging in size from 0.6mm to 1.4mm. The intensive washing process makes our sands “squeaky” clean to use industry parlance.
For those applications where the removal of the fine sand particles is essential, we use a purpose-designed classifier at our adjoining factory site, to process the fine and medium sands to create beautifully washed Playground Soft Fall Sands that meet the Australian Standards for 2-metre and 3-metre Playground Soft falls. The fine particles are captured and then used in less demanding building product applications to ensure waste is minimised.
In addition to the above two washing and screening operations, we further treat the sands to convert them to gradings that are designed for use in Water Filtration, Synthetic Turf, Tilers Coarse sands and render applications. Some of these sands are supplied in a moist form (up to 6% moisture) but most are kiln dried to remove all dust and impurities and then packed into 20kg or one-tonne bulk bags. There are approximately 12 different gradings that we convert the sands to in order to cater to the specific needs of our customers in a wide range of industries.
We also source and process some wonderful white silica sands for our customers where such a colour is essential for their products. Once again, gradings vary between fine sands up to 0.4mm and coarser grades up to 1.2mm.
A variety of colours and sizes of naturally rounded pebbles or machine rounded gravels are also processed and packed at our Carbrook Factory site. These grades are made to meet the requirements of water filtration plants and high-end landscaping applications.
