Belarus extracts about 8-9m cubic meters of sand for construction industry annually

19.07.2026. MINSK. Sand is literally the foundation for the construction sector, Yevgeny Tatarinov, head of the main department of industry at the Architecture and Construction Ministry of Belarus, said on the air of the ONT TV channel, BelTA has learned. “For construction, about 8-9 million cubic meters have been extracted in Belarus every year over the last few years. Additionally, the same volume of sand and sand-gravel mixture is extracted for road construction. Sand for the glass industry is extracted from a single quarry in Gomel Oblast,” Yevgeny Tatarinov noted. "The sand resource base in Belarus consists of more than 550 deposits ready for development. Currently, 166 are being actively mined, and over 1,200 deposits have been identified," said Sergei Viktorovich, head of the state geological fund department at the Belarusian state geological center Belgosgeocenter.

Belarus has state standards GOSTs in place for sand extraction, said Valentina Zernitskaya, chief researcher at the Institute of Environmental Management of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. “Land reclamation is always carried out on disturbed areas. If quarries are shallow, they are leveled, the topsoil is returned, and the land is subsequently used for agriculture. Deeper quarry pits are allowed to flood with water,” she explained.

BelTA