What is it?
Sand selected for what it is made of rather than what size it is — nearly pure quartz, for glass, foundries and fracking.
Why does it matter?
Every sheet of glass, every foundry mould and every hydraulically fractured well runs on graded silica sand of a specific roundness and crush strength.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Who produces it
See it on a map →Mine production
Mine productionthousand metric tons 2025 (estimated) World total 430,000 thousand metric tons
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · Gross weight; distinct from construction sand and gravel, which is sold by size not composition. · source ↗
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Country | Production | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 120,000 | 27.9% |
| China | 92,000 | 21.4% |
| Netherlands | 68,000 | 15.8% |
| Other countries | 23,000 | 5.3% |
| Turkey | 14,000 | 3.3% |
| Italy | 13,000 | 3.0% |
| France | 13,000 | 3.0% |
| India | 12,000 | 2.8% |
| Germany | 9,200 | 2.1% |
| Bulgaria | 8,800 | 2.0% |
| Russia | 7,300 | 1.7% |
| Spain | 6,300 | 1.5% |
| Malaysia | 6,000 | 1.4% |
| Poland | 5,900 | 1.4% |
| Australia | 5,600 | 1.3% |
| United Kingdom | 4,700 | 1.1% |
| Argentina | 4,500 | 1.0% |
| Canada | 3,800 | 0.9% |
| Indonesia | 3,500 | 0.8% |
| Mexico | 2,700 | 0.6% |
| Saudi Arabia | 2,100 | 0.5% |
| World total | 430,000 | 100% |
“Withheld” means the USGS suppressed the figure to avoid disclosing an individual company's data — it does not mean zero. Country rows do not always sum to the world total because the source rounds each figure independently and does not always break out an “other countries” line.
Price
average value, dollars per metric ton
Annual averagedollars per metric ton
Basis: average value, dollars per metric ton. Annual averages as published in USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗. These are reference annual averages, not a live market quote.