Vulcan Materials Company - company profile, information, business description, history, background information about Vulcan Materials Company (2023)

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Vulcan Materials Company supplies the infrastructure materials needed for the US economy. Vulcan is the largest producer of aggregates for construction in the country: mainly stone, sand and gravel. Aggregates are used in almost all forms of construction. We are also a leading producer of other construction materials, as well as a major manufacturer of chemicals. Our Chemicals segment produces caustic soda, chlorine, and other industrial and specialty chemicals.

Company history Vulcan Materials

Vulcan Materials Company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is the largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States and a world market leader. Construction aggregates include crushed stone, sand, gravel, and slag, which are used in the construction of roads, commercial buildings, and homes. The company operates quarries serving 22 states, as well as Washington D.C., Mexico, Aruba, Chile and the Cayman Islands. Revenues from gravel excavated from Vulcan's quarries account for the vast majority of the company's total sales, although its two chemical business units are also industry leaders for industrial and commercial use of caustics and solvent-based solvents. chlorine.

Vulcan produces a variety of chemicals, including chlorine, caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), caustic potash (potassium hydroxide), and chlorinated solvents. The main market for chlorine is in water and wastewater treatment, pulp and paper manufacturing, and as a primary ingredient in many other manufacturing processes. Caustic soda is mainly used in the production of aluminum, soaps and detergents, and wood pulp. Caustic potash is used in the production of other potassium chemicals, as well as in lotions and fine soaps. Finally, chlorinated solvents are used in the cleaning of metals and textiles and as an intermediate chemical in the manufacture of other materials.

Historical: Birmingham Slag Company, 1909-56

Vulcan Materials was created in 1956 when the Birmingham Slag Company of Birmingham, Alabama merged with the Vulcan Detinning Company of New Jersey. Birmingham Slag was founded in 1909 by Solon Jacob and Henry Badham, two entrepreneurs who decided to turn a waste product of the steel industry, slag, into a commodity they could sell. Slag is the non-metallic residue left over from the iron ore smelting process. The city of Birmingham had long been a center of steel production, with the industry storing vast amounts of slag when Vulcan Detinning appeared.

Jacob and Badham built a processing plant next to the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company's slag pile outside Ensley, Alabama, and began selling the material as ballast for railroad tracks. Fortunately, the founding of the Birmingham Slag came a year after the Ford Motor Company introduced its famous Model T automobile. As the country began to demand more paved roads, the Birmingham Slag found it had the perfect building material.

Despite its initial success, Birmingham Slag was up for sale in 1916. Charles Lincoln Ireland, an Ohio banker whose family operated quarries in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, bought a controlling interest in the company. He sent his three sons, Glenn, Eugene and Barney, to Alabama to manage the Birmingham Slag. Meanwhile, Charles left for Central America to purchase surplus equipment that was being sold after the completion of the Panama Canal. He returned with two steam shovels, a steam crane, a star drill, and other equipment purchased for the price of $6,590.

The Irish opened a new slag processing plant in Ensley in 1918. They also opened plants in the central Alabama towns of Fairfield and Wylam and in northern Alabama near Muscle Shoals. In 1919 and 1920, the company obtained contracts to process slag at three other Alabama steel mills: Republic Steel in Thomas, Central Iron and Steel Company in Holt, and Gulf States Steel Company in Alabama City. Despite many agreements after World War I, finances were tight. Records indicate that, during this period, the Ireland family often had to personally obtain loans from the First National Bank of Birmingham to pay the company's payroll. However, the Birmingham scum was ready when state legislators approved Alabama's issuance of good highway bonds in 1922, igniting a highway construction boom.

In 1923, the Birmingham Slag formed the Montgomery Gravel Company and began supplying sand and gravel for a dam being built at Cherokee Bluffs, Alabama. He expanded his business the following year, creating the Atlanta Aggregate Company to market sand and gravel in Georgia. In the 1930s, Birmingham Slag also owned several ready-mix concrete plants and produced asphalt and concrete blocks.

In 1939, Birmingham Slag signed a contract with the newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to dredge part of the Tennessee River so that a dam and power plant could be built at Watts Bar, marking another business expansion for the company. . Birmingham Slag continued to thrive during World War II, supplying aggregate and concrete to war efforts like the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama; and a major ammunition depot at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama.

After the war, the construction of the new federal interstate highway system proposed in the early 1950s presented a potential bonanza for Birmingham Slag. The company, however, needed more capital than a family business could raise to take advantage of the opportunity. In addition, Charles W. Ireland, grandson of the Ohio banker, became president of the Birmingham Slag in 1951 and was looking for ways to reduce inheritance taxes faced by family members. The answer came in the form of a merger with the publicly traded Vulcan Detinning Company of Sewaren, New Jersey.

Vulcan Destinning Company: 1902-56

Vulcan Detinning was founded in 1902 by Adolph Kern, owner of the Vulcan Metal Refining Company in Sewaren and the Vulcan Western Company of Chicago. The new company, Vulcan Detinning, used a process developed in Germany to recover pure tin from canned scrap. Kern later helped establish a rival company in Pennsylvania, the Republic Chemical Company. In 1912, he left Vulcan Detinning to join Republic Chemical, taking the company's trade secrets with him and initiating a series of lawsuits. Vulcan Detinning and Republic Chemical merged in 1920 after Kern was no longer associated with either company.

William J. Buttfield, who joined Vulcan Detinning as a director in 1912 when Kern left for Republic Chemical, guided Vulcan Detinning into the early 20th century. During the Depression of the 1930s, he used his experience as a commodity broker to shift the company's resources to importing coffee and rubber. Vulcan Detinning continued to pay dividends despite the fact that the Sewaren deinking plant was closed from 1932 to 1937. Employees remained on the payroll and were kept busy repairing and reconditioning the plant facilities. By 1940, Vulcan Detinning was flourishing again, although the Sewaren factory, reopened in 1937, closed for good in 1938. Buttfield is also credited with being one of the industrialists who, in the months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he eventually convinced the United States to begin stockpiling critical materials like tin.

The merger between Birmingham Slag and Vulcan Detinning was completed in 1956. At the time, Alfred Buttfield, son of William J. Buttfield, was president of Vulcan Detinning. He became president of the newly named Vulcan Materials Company.

A new era: 1957-66

Until the merger, Birmingham Slag, while successful, was a regional company of modest size. Vulcan Materials Company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and quickly became a company of national importance. The merger allowed Vulcan to diversify and create a business less dependent on the construction industry, as well as raise capital for expansion. From 1956 to 1960, Vulcan's net worth increased nearly sevenfold, from $11 million to $72 million. It also became the largest producer of construction aggregates in the country.

Although Charles W. Ireland is credited with visioning the rapid growth of Vulcan, Bernard A. Monaghan was considered its architect. Monaghan, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Harvard Law School, was the corporate lawyer for the Ireland family. He negotiated a merger with Vulcan Detinning and then orchestrated the acquisition of a dozen construction aggregate companies during the 1950s and early 1960s. He joined Vulcan in 1958 as executive vice president and soon after became president. and executive director.

One of the companies Monaghan negotiated a merger with was Lambert Brothers, Inc., an Appalachian quarrying company with a storied history. The nine Lambert brothers, from a family of 15, were low-income Smoky Mountain residents who, in keeping with company lore, started with one mule and one wheelbarrow and built a $9 million business in one generation. During the 1930s, they hauled their portable rock crushing equipment across the Appalachian states and west to Oklahoma to work on road construction. His success story is peppered with stories of wrestling and high-stakes poker. In the mid-1950s, Lambert Brothers was the largest quarrying company in the United States.

It was during this period of rapid expansion that Vulcan also became a manufacturer of chemical products. In 1957, he purchased the Union Chemical and Materials Corporation of Chicago, a construction aggregates company in the booming Midwestern market that merged with the Frontier Chemical Company. Frontier produced sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), chlorine, and hydrochloric acid for the oil industry at plants in Texas and Kansas.

Mergers with Union Chemical, Lambert Brothers, and seven other companies owned by the Lamberts were approved by Vulcan shareholders in 1957.fortunaThe magazine called it one of the most complex corporate acquisitions ever made. Vulcan continued with its strategy of buying family aggregate companies for the next 30 years. In 1982, in a story titled "Cinderella," aForbesThe correspondent noted that Vulcan had created a "near monopoly in the crushed stone business" by buying more than 90 quarries in the 1950s and 1960s "when quarries were a dime a dozen."

Expansion and reorientation: late 1960s to early 1990s

In 1967, Vulcan purchased Aluminum and Magnesium, Inc., an Ohio-based aluminum recycling company. Until 1988, when Vulcan sold its metals division, aluminum dismantling and recycling formed the core of the metal processing business. Vulcan also spent ten years exploring for oil and natural gas, forming a joint venture in 1975 with Oklahoma-based Southport Exploration, Inc. Vulcan acquired Southport Exploration in 1981, but sold the business in 1985.

In July 1987, Vulcan formally announced its Crescent Market Project, a $170 million joint venture with one of the largest construction conglomerates in Latin America, Ingenieros Civiles Associados, S.C. (ICA Group), to extract limestone from the jungle of the Yucatan peninsula. Vulcan first saw Mexico as a potential quarry to serve the Gulf Coast area of ​​the United States in 1973. The idea was abandoned and then revived in 1978. In 1981, the company began a concerted effort to locate quarries in the state. from Mexico. Quintana Roo. Later, Pete Wiese, the Vulcan geologist who led the exploration, described the effort in the company's annual magazine,Profile:"Quintana Roo was pretty unstable. I had a machete and I would get out of the car and go through the jungle to the coast to see what I could see."

The joint venture ended up settling on a site about 45 miles south of Cancun and just a few hundred meters from ancient Mayan ruins that were built from the same brown limestone. An agreement was reached with the National Institute of Archeology and History of Mexico to cover the costs of locating, mapping and preserving the ruins. The Crescent Market Project also included the construction of a deepwater port, which required the dredging of more than three million tons of rock from the port of Playa del Carmen.

Overcoming technological and logistical challenges, including Hurricane Gilbert, which struck the Yucatan coast in 1988 and caused more than $400,000 in damage to the stone processing plant being built at the time, Vulcan and Grupo ICA began shipping stones from Mexico to the United States in 1990. Most of the Mexican limestone was destined to be made into aggregates for construction materials, but because of its high calcium content it was also being used in products as diverse as fertilizers and toothpastes. The Mexican quarry won the National Stone Association's Showplace Award in 1990, its first year of operation.

In 1991, the quarry shipped 2.5 million tons of limestone, about a third of its estimated annual capacity. In late 1992, Vulcan, looking at a recovering economy and redirecting attention to the country's infrastructure, estimated that the Crescent Market Project would be profitable in 1993.

oWH Blount,A refitted Panamax-class ship named after a former CEO and then-President Emeritus of Vulcan Materials was put into operation in March 1991 to transport limestone from the Mexican quarry. At over 700 feet long and 100 feet wide, theBlount WHshe was one of the largest self-unloading ships in service. She could carry more than 64,000 tons of limestone, or about 2,667 trucks. A second similar vessel was commissioned in late 1992.

In addition to the Crescent Market Project (which had begun in 1987), Vulcan continued with other acquisitions, taking over Texas-based White's Mines, Inc. and two affiliated companies for $89 million that year. At the time, it was the largest acquisition in the company's long history. The purchase gave Vulcan control of five more quarries, including the Uvalde limestone quarry west of San Antonio. The quarry produced asphalt rock, a stone naturally impregnated with asphalt, making it a natural paving material.

Three years later, in 1990, Vulcan surpassed the White's Mines acquisition by paying more than $110 million for Reed Crushed Stone Company, Inc. and two related companies. Included in the purchase was the Reed Quarry near Paducah, Kentucky, the largest crushed stone quarry in the country. The purchase also included a fleet of barges and a coal transshipment and blending business, placing Vulcan Materials in the coal handling business for the first time.

Environmental Concerns: Early 1990s

Vulcan's chemical business was heavily regulated and often raised public concerns about environmental health and safety. In 1990, Vulcan committed to reducing hazardous emissions at its chemical plants by 90% over the next five years, primarily by converting hydrochloric acid to calcium chloride, which could be used as a dust stabilizer and de-icer. Vulcan was removing excess hydrochloric acid, a waste product from other chemical production processes, by pumping the acid into limestone reservoirs a mile underground in a deep-well injection process permitted and approved by the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA). The limestone neutralized the acid; however, it was still considered a dangerous problem for reporting purposes under Title III of the federal Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act. This resulted in Vulcan being listed among the worst polluters in the United States.

To change its status as a major polluter, Vulcan completed construction of a new calcium chloride plant at its chemical manufacturing complex in Wichita, Kansas, in early 1993. Even before opening, the plant received a Certificate of Achievement. Renew America Environmental, a national environmental organization based in Washington, D.C. The processing plant, with a capacity of 18 million pounds per year, was designed by Tetra Technologies, which also distributes the calcium chloride. Primarily used to purify drinking water, calcium chloride has also served as a biocide in the fruit processing industry and as a cleaning material in electronics.

In addition to building the calcium chloride facility, Vulcan's chemicals division was phasing out production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and assisting in the development of non-ozone depleting replacements for CFCs. Vulcan was a member of two major trade associations, the National Stone Association and the Chemical Manufacturers Association, which were active in environmental health and safety issues. The company also participated in the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Council, a nonprofit organization that encouraged the development of wildlife sanctuaries on company-owned land. In 1990, the Vulcan Quarry in Warrenton, Virginia, was the first site in the country to be certified by the Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Council; Vulcan also received the Virginia Conservationist of the Year award for his efforts at the quarry. By 1992, the organization had certified 15 Vulcan quarries.

Historically, Vulcan Material's two core businesses have provided economic stability; construction aggregates performed well when the chemical market was down and vice versa. However, construction spending in the United States, when adjusted for inflation, declined every year between 1986 and 1991, the longest continuous decline since the Great Depression. With the economy in recession, the company posted three consecutive years of lower net income, from $136 million on net sales of $1.05 billion in 1988 to $52.6 million on net sales of $1.01 billion in 1991 In 1992, net sales increased by 7 percent to $1.07 billion, while net income increased 79 percent to $93.98 million.

Beginning in 1993, the company was encouraged by a recovering economy and a renewed focus on modernizing and expanding the country's highways. Although the United States Congress passed the Surface Intermodal Transportation Efficiency Act in December 1991, its effects were not fully in play until 1993. Vulcan benefited from increased federal spending on highway construction, especially gravel: shipments increased to 117 million tons, eight tons more than the previous year - and prices rose for the first time in five years. The real estate sector, also part of Vulcan's construction division, recovered slightly during the year but remained relatively weak. However, Vulcan's chemicals division suffered during 1993 due to lower sales and profits. Despite the construction of a new sodium chlorine plant in Wichita, Kansas, a sharp drop in caustic soda prices caused an imbalance in chlorine products. Fortunately for Vulcan, strong results from its construction division offset problems at the chemical plant, and year-end net sales rose slightly to $1.13 billion in 1993.

Acquisitions and Growth: Mid-1990s

To overcome its difficulties with its chemicals division, Vulcan invested heavily in acquisitions and the construction of new facilities to increase the reach and breadth of its involvement in new and emerging technologies. Three acquisitions in 1994 fit this trend: the first was Tucson-based Peroxidation Systems, Inc., an established environmental, industrial and municipal water treatment company (renamed Vulcan Peroxidation Systems, Inc.); the second and third were part of Exxon Corporation and became wholly owned subsidiaries of Vulcan as Callaway Chemical Company (based in Georgia) and Callaway Chemical Limited (based in Vancouver, British Columbia). This latest purchase marked Vulcan's serious entry into the production of chemicals used in the paper, textile and water treatment industries. The disparate approaches to these acquisitions of Vulcan's core chemical operations led to the formation of two separate business units: the chlor-alkali unit (consisting of its traditional chlorinated and caustic-based operations) and the Performance Systems ( covering newer operations in paper, pulp and textiles, and environmental water treatment).

Despite its efforts to expand the chemicals division and avoid its complete dependence on the often volatile market for caustic soda and chlorine, the chemicals unit posted its first loss in 24 years. However, Vulcan's management was not overly concerned as they believed in its long-term perspective and knew that it would take time to recoup acquisition costs. Another reason was the performance of its construction division, which posted record growth. Sales of stone and related building materials increased, and even the real estate market recovered. A jump in federal highway and home construction lifted the division's profit 39% to $162 million, offsetting a chemical unit loss of $7.3 million and bringing total Vulcan profit to $98 million on net sales, nearly $1.3 billion in 1994.

In 1995, Vulcan's long-term vision for its chemicals division paid off: The unit enjoyed a strong market in caustic and chlorine and turned the prior year's losses into profits of more than $87 million. The construction division also maintained its record growth, shipping more than 136 million tons of crushed stone and other aggregates to generate profit of $182 million on sales of $885 million. Vulcan achieved overall net sales of just under $1.5 billion in 1995 when a new company president took the reins. Donald M. James, who joined Vulcan in 1992 as Senior Vice President and General Counsel, assumed additional CEO responsibilities in 1996 when Howard Sklenar ended his nearly 25 years with Vulcan and retired from day-to-day operations. Sklenar was named Chairman Emeritus in 1997 when James took over as Chairman.

Through the last few years of the century, Vulcan grew steadily until in 1999, with a phenomenal leap, the company surpassed the $2 billion mark in net sales. Sales for 1997 and 1998 posted respectable single-digit gains of 6 and 7 percent, respectively, while profits for 1996 to 1997 were up 11 percent and for 1997 to 1998 they doubled to 22 percent. However, 1999 took Vulcan to a much different stage, with net sales increasing 33% from $1.8 billion in 1998 to $2.4 billion in 1999. This growth was due in part to various acquisitions and joint ventures, including the purchase in 1998 from CalMat Company, California's leading producer of aggregates, and Vulcan's ongoing joint venture with Grupo ICA, which transported millions of tons of limestone throughout Mexico and the United States. Another joint venture was with Mitsui & Co., Ltd., which partnered with Vulcan to build a new plant and substantially increase production of various caustic chemicals. In addition, Vulcan's construction division began reaping the benefits of the federal government's TEA-21, a new highway construction and reconstruction law passed in 1998 that provided $157 billion over the next six years for renovation and new construction. of national highways.

Looking ahead: the 2000s

By 2000, Vulcan had expanded its construction aggregates empire to have facilities in 21 states, the District of Columbia and Mexico, with 236 operating quarries. The following year, Vulcan purchased Grupo ICA's interest in its Mexican joint venture, Crescent Market Companies, paying more than $121 million for sole ownership of the Playa del Carmen operations. Despite the size and scope of its business, Vulcan was a huge but rather quiet conglomerate. Many Americans did not know the name of Vulcan (except perhaps in theday in the starssense), but the company was pleased with what it called its "boring" image. In his 2001 annual report, Vulcan mocked himself by admitting that the aggregates industry might not be exciting for the average person, stating, "Sexy? No. But very profitable." However, for Vulcan, its shareholders and Wall Street, the only thing that mattered was being profitable. According to the figures, Vulcan Materials achieved total revenues of $3.02 billion in 2001, with net sales of $2.5 billion and profits increasing to nearly $381 million.

While Vulcan Materials has been blacklisted by the EPA more than once in its long history, Vulcan has become a company advertising environmental concerns and even a leader in quarry beautification. Twenty-four of Vulcan's quarries in the United States and its Crescent quarry in Mexico received top honors in the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association's About Face Award in early 2002. Vulcan Materials Company has continued to be the world's leading producer of aggregates. as well as an important force in the production of chloralkali compounds and derivatives for industrial and commercial use.

Main Subsidiaries:Vulcan Chemical Technologies, Inc.; Vulcan Gulf Coast Materials, Inc.; Vulcan Materials Company; Vulcan Performance Chemicals, Inc.; Wanatah Trucking Company Inc.

Mainly competitors:the Dow chemical company; Lafarge North America Inc.; Martin Marietta Materials, Inc.; Florida Rock Industries, Inc.; CRH plc.

Chronology

• Important dates:
• 1902:Adolf Kern creates the Vulcan Detinning Company in Sewaren, New Jersey.
• 1909:Solon Jacob and Henry Badham founded the Birmingham Slag Company in Birmingham, Alabama.
• 1956:A Birmingham slag company and a Vulcan detinning company were founded to form a Vulcan materials company.
• 1957:Vulcan Materials purchases and merges with several companies, including Lambert Brothers and Union Chemical and Materials Corporation.
• 1960:Vulcan Materials is ranked as the largest producer of construction aggregates in the country.
• 1967:Vulcan adquiere Aluminium and Magnesium, Inc.
• 1975:Company begins oil and natural gas exploration through joint venture with Southport Exploration, Inc. of Oklahoma
• 1981:Vulcan compra Southport Exploration.
• 1985:Vulcan sells Southport Exploration and exits the oil and natural gas business.
• 1987:Vulcan kicks off its ambitious Crescent Market Project, a $170 million joint venture in Mexico.
• 1990:The first stone from the Mexican quarry begins to be transported.
• 1992:Sales pass the billion dollar mark for the first time.
• 1994:The Chemicals division is divided into two separate units: Chloralkali Business and Performance Systems Business.
• 1998:Vulcan buys CalMat and gets a boost from TEA-21 approval for construction of federal highways.
• 1999:For the first time, sales exceed US$2 billion.
• 2001:Vulcan buys half of Grupo ICA's joint venture in Crescent Market.
• 2002:Twenty-five of Vulcan's quarries in the United States and Mexico have won prestigious environmental awards.

additional details

• public company
• Incorporated:1956
• Staff:10.000
• Sales:$3.02 billion (2001)
• Stock Exchange:NY
• Action symbol:CMV
• NAIC:212319 Other gravel and gravel Mining and quarrying (pt); 212321 Sand and gravel extraction for construction; 324121 Manufacture of Asphalt Mixes and Blocks for Paving; 325181 Manufacture of Alkalis and Chlorine

additional reference

• Archibald, Robert and Robert Beard, "Making Waves in Gulf Coast Markets",pit And Quarry,June 1991.
• Blevins, Dallas R. y Jessie L. Forbes,Vulcan Materials: Alabama's Part of Fortune(unpublished), Montevallo University, Alabama, 1984.
• Blount, W. Houston, "The Past As a Challenge to the Future," address given at The Newcomen Society in North America, Birmingham, Alabama, October 13, 1982.
• Bonnie, Fred, "The low cost of high profile public relations",Skill Mining Review,January 2, 1993.
• Carmichael, Jane, "Cinderella",Forbes,March 15, 1982.
• Connel, Greg, "Running with the Changes",pit And Quarry,January 1990.
• Pierce, Frank, "Vulcan Materials Company: Part of the Alabama Fortune",Journal of the Birmingham Historical Society,December 1985.
• "Vulcan Quarries Recognized for Outstanding Beautification Efforts",pit And Quarry,March 2002, p. 17
• "Vulcan to acquire CalMat,"pit And Quarry,December 1998, p. 9.
• "Vulcan will buy 50% of the shares of Vulcan/ICA Joint Venture",birmingham Business Magazine,January 19, 2001, p.9.
• "Vulcan Ranked Among World's Best Managed Companies"pit And Quarry,October 2000, p. sixteen.
• Weaver, Bronwyn, "Community Involvement Rewrites Family History,"pit And Quarry,June 1990.
• Wolf, Terry, "eRocks: If you're not serving customers online, maybe it's time to start thinking about it."pit And Quarry,October 2000, p. S2