A local company has come up with a granite replacement and has successfully used it to build roads in Brunei and widen the runways at Changi Airport.

A local company has come up with a granite replacement and has successfully used it to build roads in Brunei and widen the runways at Changi Airport.

Chemilink Technologies developed the method to stabilise and strengthen soil by adding a proprietary chemical concoction it first brewed about 10 years ago, but interest in its products is skyrocketing only now.

This is because its materials now cost half the price of conventional granite. The price of granite has risen from $25 to $70 a tonne since Indonesia halted sand shipments to Singapore in February and detained Singapore-bound granite barges suspected of smuggling sand.

Inventor and company executive director Wu Dong Qing said that his Jurong facility can supply 12,000 tonnes of material in the coming year.

This should be enough to meet the local demand for the construction of new roads and shipyard loading areas, which he estimated to be about 800,000 sqm, an area bigger than 70 football fields.

The 48-year-old naturalised Singaporean said: ‘By treating the soil at the worksite to replace granite, the use of quarry materials can be minimised.’

The company’s products have been tested and found to be harder, more water-resistant and easier to maintain than granite-based tarmac, even in swampy and weak soil areas and reclaimed land.

Now, Chemilink’s technology is being tested in building construction.

China-born Mr Wu, who earned his doctorate in geotechnical engineering at Nanyang Technological University in 1994, also sees great potential in recycling the concrete from demolished buildings.

‘That way, we can minimise construction costs and the impact on the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers,’ he said.

Source: The Straits Times, 21 April 2007