The short answer
A delivered aggregate rate is five things added together: the cost of winning and crushing the stone, royalty and other statutory charges on the mineral, loading, freight over the lead distance, and GST, which is 5 per cent on crushed stone. Freight is usually the largest variable. No single rate per tonne holds across India, because royalty, rock and distance all change from one district to the next.
People search for the price of 20 mm aggregate per tonne and find a figure. It is correct for one plant, one month and one delivery point. What is useful everywhere is knowing what the figure is made of.
01The five parts
| Part | Covers | Moves with |
|---|---|---|
| Production | Drilling, blasting, loading at the face, crushing and screening | Rock hardness, product size, diesel, explosives, wear parts |
| Statutory charges | Royalty, district mineral foundation and other state levies, transit pass fees | State notifications |
| Loading | Loader time and weighment at the plant | Little |
| Freight | Tipper haulage from plant to tipping point | Lead distance, road condition, diesel |
| GST | 5% on crushed stone under HSN 2517 | Tax law |
02Ex-plant and delivered are different rates
A rate quoted ex-plant stops at the weighbridge. The buyer sends trucks and pays the freight. A delivered rate, sometimes written FOR site, includes haulage to a named point. Two quotations can only be compared once both are on the same basis and at the same place.
Freight grows in step with distance while everything else stays put. That is why the same stone costs clearly more at 50 km than at 15, and why a supplier's first question is where the road head is. The arithmetic is in lead and lift.
03Why sizes are priced differently
Every extra pass through a crusher costs power and liner wear. GSB needs the least crushing and is normally the cheapest product per tonne. WMM adds a mixing plant. The single sizes cost more as they get smaller, because 10 mm and 6 mm stone has been round the circuit more often than 40 mm. Dust is the exception: it is a by-product, and its price follows local demand more than its cost.
04Royalty and what goes with it
Royalty is the state's charge on the mineral, set per tonne or per cubic metre by notification and different in every state. Alongside it come a contribution to the district mineral foundation and, in some states, further cesses or fees. These are not the supplier's to discount. In a rate contract they are best shown separately and passed through at the notified figure, so that a revision by the state changes the rate by exactly that amount and no more.
The documents that prove royalty was paid on your stone matter as much as the amount. They are covered in royalty and transit passes.
05GST
Crushed stone, gravel and similar aggregates fall under HSN 2517 at 5 per cent, and that rate was unchanged by the rationalisation of September 2025. Whether GST is also payable on the royalty itself, under reverse charge, is the tax department's position and has been under challenge in the courts for some years. Treat that as a question for your tax adviser, and ask a supplier how they have handled it before you sign.
06What a rate contract should fix and what it should float
- Fix the production and loading component for the life of the package, against a monthly tonnage.
- Float diesel, by a formula tied to a published price, applied to the freight and to the fuel share of production.
- Pass through royalty and statutory levies at the notified rate.
- State the lead the delivered rate assumes and a rate per tonne-kilometre for any change.
- State the unit. Tonnes on a weighbridge docket, not brass or cubic metres.
07Comparing quotations
Put each quote into one table with the five parts as rows. Convert any rate per brass or per cubic metre to tonnes using a density both sides accept, as set out in brass, cft, cubic metre and tonne. Check whether GST is inside or outside the figure. Check which gradings and test limits the price is for. A quote that is lowest on the total and vague on the rows usually has something left out.