Carmeuse Lime & Stone says it manufactures and distributes approximately 7 million tons of finished products per year.

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As the largest producer of lime and limestone products in North America, Carmeuse Lime & Stone says it manufactures and distributes approximately 7 million tons of finished products per year. In addition, the Pittsburgh company provides an additional 25 million tons of high-purity chemical limestone and aggregates and 2 million tons of high-trade silica sand products. With 39 North American manufacturing and distribution facilities, it serves customers throughout the United States and eastern Canada, and employs more than 2,400 people.

Its parent company, Luxembourg-based Carmeuse Holding, decided to enter the North American lime market in 1992 and purchased a facility in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, followed by six additional acquisitions. President and CEO Thomas Buck joined the company in 2000.

“Since then, we acquired Rockwell Lime in 2006 and Oglebay Norton in 2008,” Buck says. “The company has grown from about $80 million in revenue to nearly $1 billion in about 15 years.”    

Carmeuse Lime & Stone is well-represented in Ontario as well as 26 states east of the Mississippi River and Texas, Colorado and California. “There are several things that set us apart, and one is our proximity to a lot of steel customers,” he notes. “Our plants are very close to our customer base. From a logistics and just-in-time perspective, we almost work as one company, the customers and us. We’re unique in that perspective. Neither we nor our customers have a lot of storage, so we’re very family with just-in-time delivery.”

The company serves three primary markets: steel, flue gas desulfurization, and oil and gas exploration. It is also active in the construction, wastewater and potable water, paper and chemical markets. “We deal with municipalities in potable water and water treatment, as well as waste treatment,” Buck says. “We work with a lot of mines, with water discharge from the mines for neutralization and acid mine drainage.

“Our largest market is steel, which has been affected by the resurgence of domestic production of steel and less dependence on imports,” he adds. “This trend is driven by oil and gas costs, the availability of logistics and the devaluation of the dollar. We’re seeing it more and more. We’re supposedly in a recession, but every steel mill is running near capacity.”

Buck says the same trend holds true in the flue gas desulfurization market. “With the rapidly increasing cost of energy, people are being creative and turning to large electric power generators, most of which use fossil fuels,” he explains. “In order to meet clean air criteria, they try to burn low-sulfur coal, which is very high demand. But in order for them to lessen their energy cost, they buy higher sulfur coal and use more lime or limestone to treat off-gases. This trend has been a boost to the number of tons and sales dollars we’re able to generate per year.”

Continuous Improvement
Buck says Carmeuse Lime & Stone has a “very open culture” that is focused on continuous improvement. “In our mines, quarries and plants, we establish expectations for all employees – hourly or management – for them to follow on a daily basis,” he says.

“We continue to improve by raising the bar. Where we fail to meet expectations, we examine what prevented us from reaching our goals. Can it be corrected by the individual, or through external assistance? How do we facilitate that in a timely manner so we eliminate those barriers?”

Safety is the first and foremost priority, Buck notes. “We’ve made tremendous changes in how we approach safety since I came here in 2000,” he says. “We weren’t very focused then, but we’ve changed completely.

“I start every meeting with key safety indicators to measure how we’re doing. We feel that safety is everyone’s responsibility, and in the last eight years, we’ve seen tremendous improvements.”

Buck says the company’s future looks bright. “That sounds self-serving coming from the CEO, but I think we have just the right mix, with a tremendous customer base, high quality raw materials and an ever-improving process delivering quality finished products to our customers,” he emphasizes.

“We have what I think are some of the best people in the world to put those elements together,” he adds. “Things don’t get much better.”