Why Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates Import Sand Despite Their Deserts

At first glance, it sounds like a bad joke: countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, surrounded by sand as far as the eye can see, have millions of tonnes of sand shipped in every year. Yet this apparent contradiction is not a luxury issue; it is a very real construction-material dilemma with global consequences.

Why desert sand fails on construction sites

When people picture Saudi Arabia or Dubai, they tend to imagine dunes, heat and fine sand. However, this desert sand is of little use for the structures now rising across the Gulf at record speed: skyscrapers, artificial islands, glass façades, motorways and megacities such as Neom.

The reason lies in the details, more precisely in the grains’ shape. Desert sand has been worn down by wind over thousands of years, leaving grains that are:

• extremely fine
• smooth and rounded
• frequently contaminated with dust and other particles

That creates a problem for concrete. To produce strong concrete, the sand grains need to lock together with cement and gravel. Rounded grains are more likely to slide past one another, rather than forming a stable structure.

“Fine, rounded desert sand may look ideal at first glance, but in concrete it weakens the load-bearing capacity of entire buildings.”

Engineers therefore use sandy materials from riverbeds, quarries or the seabed. The grains found there are more angular, with edges and corners. They interlock more effectively, increase compressive strength and make concrete less likely to crack.

The same issue applies to high-tech products such as glass and highly pure silicon dioxides, which are indispensable to industry. Desert sand is often too fine, too dusty and too contaminated. Every year, the Emirates pay tens of millions of dollars for especially pure quartz sand: a high-end material that simply does not occur in the desert on their doorstep.

Billion-dollar projects consume sand from around the world

The Gulf monarchies are expanding rapidly. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have spent years transforming into glittering metropolises. Behind every skyline lies an enormous appetite for building materials, especially sand. Sand is not only used in skyscraper concrete, but also in:

• glass façades and windows
• asphalt for roads
• foundations, tunnels and bridges
• land reclamation for islands at sea

The scale is striking. For vast developments such as the Palm Islands and the Burj Khalifa, Dubai relied not only on locally available marine sand but also brought in tonnes of material from countries including Australia and Egypt. Tens of thousands of tonnes of imported sand were used for the world’s tallest building alone.

“Estimates suggest that the Emirates used more than six million tonnes of sand in 2023, much of it not from their own desert.”

Saudi Arabia is little different. Vision 2030 is intended to reduce the country’s dependence on oil through futuristic cities such as Neom, enormous industrial parks and new infrastructure across the kingdom. Every one of these schemes relies on tonnes of sand as a basic ingredient.

How much sand do the United Arab Emirates actually import?

Data on this trade are limited, but customs statistics offer an insight. For the United Arab Emirates, they reveal a surprising picture: the country imports sand on a large scale, not only from distant regions but even from a neighbouring state.

United Arab Emirates (2023)	Origin	Value (US$ million)
Sand imports	40.6	Saudi Arabia: 34.5
		Egypt: 1.39
		Belgium: 0.98
Estimated consumption	> 6 million tonnes	–

The Emirates alone therefore spent more than US$40 million buying sand that, in theory, appears to be lying in their own back garden - just in the wrong form and quality.

Global sand rush: when grains become scarce

The boom in the Gulf forms part of a much wider problem. According to the UN, as much as 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel are used worldwide every year. No other raw material apart from water is moved in such quantities. Cities are growing, roads and ports are being built, and coastlines are being reclaimed.

This demand brings significant side effects:

• Riverbeds are dredged deeper, which can worsen flooding.
• Beaches shrink when sand is removed from them.
• Habitats for fish, birds and other animals disappear.
• Illegal sand pits and criminal networks emerge in some countries.

In India and parts of Africa, people already speak of a “sand mafia”. Beaches are looted at night, lorries carry illegally extracted sand without permission, and authorities and local residents come under pressure.

“Sand is no longer an insignificant building material; it is a contested raw material with its own shadow economy.”

Why Gulf states cannot simply use more of their own sand

It may seem obvious to extract more coastal sand from their own waters. But that approach also has drawbacks. When sand is systematically removed from beaches or shallow coastal areas, beaches can erode. Waves then take the missing material back from the shoreline. Holiday hotels can suddenly find themselves beside narrow, unstable strips of coast.

Many Gulf states therefore seek to protect particularly sensitive areas or shift sand extraction farther offshore. This raises costs, but reduces political and environmental pressure. For finer specialist grades and raw materials for glass, however, imports from countries with suitable deposits often remain the only option.

Early solutions: recycling and manufactured sand

Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have recognised how risky their reliance on imported sand has become. Alongside the construction boom, several strategies are now being pursued:

• Recycled concrete: Demolition material from older buildings is crushed, cleaned and used as aggregate in new concrete.
• Manufactured sand: Rock is deliberately crushed in processing plants to achieve the required grain size. The resulting grains are angular and well suited to concrete.
• New building materials: Experiments are under way with geopolymers, lightweight concrete and binders that require less sand.
• Stricter standards: Regulations are intended to ensure that materials are used more efficiently and wasted less often.

For Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, “greener” building materials are becoming increasingly important. Authorities publicly present this as a sustainable transition. At the same time, project lists continue to grow, and every new motorway, stadium and artificial lagoon again requires thousands of tonnes of aggregate.

What makes sand so valuable - and where it is used

Sand may seem ordinary in everyday life, but it plays a crucial role in construction and industry. Its key uses include:

• Concrete: Without sand, there are no foundations, floor slabs or structural shells.
• Glass: Windows, bottles and screens all begin with quartz sand.
• Electronics: Pure silicon derived from quartz sand is the basis for chips and solar modules.
• Infrastructure: Railway embankments, road sub-bases and tunnel stabilisation.

Demand is particularly sensitive in coastal regions. There, sand is used to extend cities into the sea, raise sea defences or artificially replenish beaches that would otherwise shrink because of climate change and rising sea levels. Every reclaimed luxury island in the Gulf therefore indirectly competes with coastal-protection projects elsewhere in the world for the same resource.

How the problem could be eased over the long term

There are numerous possible approaches, ranging from tighter environmental requirements to new construction methods. Specialists frequently identify three main levers:

• Less material per building: Leaner designs, improved structural engineering, and timber and hybrid construction methods can substantially reduce sand demand.
• More reuse: Rather than demolishing old buildings completely, they can be converted or parts of them reused, saving new material.
• Regional planning: Major projects should not all be built at the same time, in order to avoid peaks in demand and extraction.

In the Gulf in particular, two interests collide directly: the pursuit of global prestige through ever more spectacular developments, and the effort to become more sustainable. As long as megacities such as Neom and new island worlds at sea remain on the drawing board, demand for suitable sand will stay high.

The seemingly absurd trade of selling sand to desert states demonstrates one thing above all: raw materials are defined not just by quantity, but by quality and context. Billions of tonnes of unusable dune grains offer little help when the construction industry needs angular, load-bearing grains. The international sand market fills precisely this gap, along with all the economic opportunities and environmental risks attached to it.