Blacktop Standard

New European blacktop standard regulations came into effect on 1 January 2008 in all EU states.

The specifications that have been prepared by the EU standards setting body will became harmonised standards in March 2008, and at the same time all equivalent national standards across Europe were withdrawn.

In the UK, the new family of standards for asphalt will be BS EN 13108 and will cover Hot Rolled Asphalt (HRA), replacing the old British standard of BS 594, Asphalt Concrete (AC) replacing BS 4987, and a new standard for the UK covering Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA).

For customers in the UK, the standards change will most notably mean that material descriptions will use "asphalt concrete" (AC) instead of "macadam".

Although the new EU-wide EN13108 standards will change the way asphalt mixes are described and specified, if the terms are correctly applied the materials themselves will remain the same.

As such, the new CE standards do not dictate asphalt mixes that can be used across Europe, but will harmonize the specifications used to describe them.

One of the best descriptions of the new EU changes are made in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Aggregates Business Europe.

That magazine is available online at Aggregates Business Europe website.


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