With a global building boom and the arrival of hydraulic fracturing technology for oil and gas in the United States, the demand for sand has been skyrocketing. In 2014, 196 million tons of sand and its bigger counterpart gravel were mined around the world, according to the US Geological Survey. After water, it’s the most abundantly used natural resource, Peduzzi said. It’s used in everything from swimming-pool filters, metal castings and oil wells to smartphone screens and toothpaste.

The overall sand and gravel market was valued at $8.3bn in the US last year and £1.7bn ($2.5bn) in the UK in 2013, according to the USGS and the UK’s Mineral Products Association. Global demand for sand is expected to rise 5.5% a year through 2018, according to a December 2014 report from the Freedonia Group. Investors willing to weather the volatility, sift through the fragmented market and take on potential environmental risks could stand to profit from the growing appetite for this global commodity.

For years the sand market had been pretty “boring,” said Sonny Randhawa, a vice president in charge of research for the energy sector at D.A. Davidson, an Oregon based investment firm. But in the past few years the sand market has been more “feast or famine”, he said, particularly in the US.

Uneven global demand

Demand for sand is spread unevenly across the globe.