Downer Rosehill Sustainable Resource Centre

Heavy industrial land is in extremely short supply in Sydney. The Central Sydney Industrial Estate allows for the reinvigoration of the former Shell refinery site as a modern industrial estate that is aligned with Parramatta City Council’s potential future plans for the Rosehill/ Camellia industrial area.

"Downer’s Sustainable Road Resource Centre, which will form part of the new industrial estate, is a world first in co-locating asphalt and bitumen product production with resource recovery operations that produce asphalt raw material inputs from road waste (reclaimed asphalt pavement and road sweepings/ non-destructive diggings).

Downer is pioneering efforts to apply innovative technology to produce high performance road pavement materials that incorporate a substantial component of repurposed material and has several Australian and world firsts to its name.

Because the largest constituents of asphalt are aggregates and bitumen it makes sense to use recovered aggregates where possible and blend other repurposed materials into the bitumen binder. Co-location of these resource recovery facilities with asphalt production on a single site provides unique benefits to the road industry supply chain.

This results in the following environmental, social and economic benefits:

- Reducing the amount of virgin resources that need to be extracted (270,000 tpa of raw material recovered from road waste)
- Reducing the amount of landfill space required to permanently dispose of waste (290,000 tpa of waste material diverted from landfill)
- Reducing the amount of heavy vehicle traffic and associated emissions on the already congested Sydney roads
- Reducing the cost of asphalt and road programs
- Creating a showcase of world best practice in sustainable road management.

Sergio Cinerari
Chief Operating Officer – Australian Operations
Downer Group