Jurong Port opens S$200 million shared-services hub for ready-mixed concrete
The facility, part of a larger construction park to be completed by 2030, enables companies to streamline logistics, cut costs
PORT operator Jurong Port (JP) on Wednesday (Nov 27) opened a S$200 million shared-services hub for ready-mixed concrete, which will enable construction companies to streamline logistics planning and cut costs.
The Ready-Mixed Concrete (RMC) Ecosystem facility, part of a planned Integrated Construction Park (ICP), offers services such as centralised recycling, truck washing and logistics planning. The system will improve storage capacity by 75 per cent, saving up to 8 hectares of land in the process, and cut more than a million truck trips.
The pooling of services will enable sector players to focus on core activities such as batching concrete, and improving their competitiveness, JP said.
Terence Seow, JP’s chief executive officer, said the port operator worked closely with various government agencies and industry partners “to collectively innovate, revamp and relocate a well-entrenched RMC supply chain to be adjacent to the waterfront”.
Spanning 11.9 hectares, the RMC facility has 11 aggregated plots. Six are used for common storage, while the remaining five are integrated with RMC plants. They are fully occupied by nine local companies, said JP.
Speaking at the opening on Wednesday, Minister for National Development Desmond Lee said: “These shared facilities free up usable land area for production activities within each RMC firm’s plot, allowing them to use up to 80 per cent of their land for RMC production. This is a vast improvement from the previous 40 per cent utilisation, when land plots were developed in silo.”
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The RMC batching plants are now able to produce 45,000 cubic metres of concrete per plant each month, 50 per cent higher than the previous capacity, he said.
The improvement “will support the projected demand for concrete in the western region of Singapore”, he said.
As the key landing point for shipped construction materials, the Jurong Port location enables players to aggregate raw materials such as cement, construction aggregates (sand and granite) and steel, said JP.
An integrated set-up facilitates the manufacturing of precast components and modules within the port, and the housing of different construction facilities together – terminals, storage yards and ready-mixed concrete batching plants – enhances collaboration and optimises land use, the port operator said.
The construction park will also include an Integrated Construction and Prefabrication Hub, to be completed and operational by 2027. A multi-tenancy model increases land utilisation, and three local precast operators have expressed interest, taking up three of the four floors at the facility, JP said.
Jurong Port’s handling of construction materials has been rising since its recovery from the pandemic in 2020. The majority of Singapore’s cement, steel and construction aggregates imports come through its port to support the country’s construction industry.
Global construction consultancy Linesight said in November that Singapore’s construction industry growth is expected to slow from 5.2 per cent in 2023 to 3.3 per cent in 2024, due to soft external demand and a decline in contracts issued in the first quarter of 2024.
Linesight expects the sector to grow by an annual average of 4.1 per cent from 2025 to 2027, driven by investments in transport, renewable energy and manufacturing, including the S$21.9 billion high-speed railway project linking Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.
The Building and Construction Authority has projected total construction demand in 2024 at between S$32 billion and S$38 billion, with the public sector contributing about 55 per cent of total demand.
The authority expects a “steady improvement in construction demand over the medium term”, to reach between S$31 billion and S$38 billion per year from 2025 to 2028.
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