Quarries provide earth materials such as sand, gravel, crushed rock and clay that are processed into raw material inputs for buildings and construction, agriculture and industrial processes. Approximately 90% of the output from quarries in Australia is used in the building and construction industries.

The majority of the approximate 2,600 quarries in Australia are located within 100 km of main cities and town centres which assists in minimising the cost of buildings and infrastructure development. In the year 2000 alone, quarries produced over 130 million tonnes of aggregates for building and construction purposes with an estimated ex-quarry value of $1.3 billion.

The industry comprises of quarry operators and equipment and service providers. Quarry operators range from large multi-national companies operating throughout Australia’s metropolitan and provincial centres to small family owned quarries and municipal quarries serving provincial and rural markets. Over 7,000 personnel are employed within the industry.

Quarrying is a natural resource industry, conducted not in isolation but as part of a chain of inter-connected activities. These extend from the finding and securing of earth resources, to processing and the manufacture and transportation of simple as well as sophisticated construction and building materials, to the interactions and impacts on surrounding communities and ultimately to recycling and post extractive end-uses where old quarries are put to new uses.

Australian companies were amongst the first in the world to identify the inherent value of the integration of quarrying with downstream construction material manufacturing such as pre-mixed concrete and to develop and globally apply business models that could harness such value adding. In the space of several decades Australian quarrying and construction materials companies have forged an international presence and identity to become pre-eminent amongst the world’s integrated construction materials companies.