Set in Stone

Vulcan Materials Co. is the largest natural aggregate producer in North America, and it consistently has been named one of the best managed companies in the U.S. In recent years the Birmingham, Ala.-based company has been edging cautiously into the business of recycling concrete and asphalt.

Indeed, its Midwest Division is a member of the Construction Materials Recycling Association. Certainly, industry observers are curious as to how this big and long-time building materials company plans to be involved in recycling.

C&D Recycler associate publisher William Turley recently had the opportunity to interview Mac Badgett (pictured at left), senior vice president of Vulcan’s Construction Materials Division.

William Turley: How does recycling concrete and asphalt fit into Vulcan’s business?

Mac Badgett: It is a natural adjunct to our stone business. The same activity that we perform at a quarry is the same processing activity that occurs at a recycling operation. We use the same types of equipment, we sell into the same marketplace, to the same types of customers. It is kind of a natural bolt-on activity that fits in nicely with our existing stone and aggregate business. We don’t do a great deal of asphalt recycling, only in the areas where we have asphalt plants. We consume almost all that product internally and sell very little on the open market.

WT: Vulcan is doing some custom crushing for its own quarries and your customers, correct?

MB: Yes. But again, not much on the asphalt side.

WT: What does Vulcan see as its role in the concrete and asphalt recycling industry?

MB: We will continue to analyze marketplace by marketplace whether to recycle. We will do recycling where it seems to make economic sense for us. In some cases we are a natural place for raw material to be brought in by demolition contractors. In other cases, we move a plant onto a site. Also, we have recycling yards where people bring us the raw material and we process there. It is a continually growing effort, although it is not the most important future imperative that we have. We analyze markets, and where there is no naturally occurring aggregate deposit, it often makes sense to have base stone and a couple of other sizes available from our recycling efforts.

WT: Right. You have some in southern California from the CalMat purchase, and in Chicago Vulcan purchased R.I. Busse and is recycling there...

MB: We do some in New Orleans, in Norfolk, in the Virginia Beach area; particularly where water-borne transportation has to bring the virgin material in, the economics make sense.

WT: Like in Tampa.

MB: Yes.

WT: For a long time the natural aggregate industry was very negative toward recycling. Do you think that attitude has changed within the industry?

MB: I can’t speak for the whole industry. From our standpoint, we have changed our attitude. When recycling first began, we saw it as a competitive product, and we were concerned how specifiers would view recycled aggregate. If they were to view that material on equal terms with virgin aggregate, that gave us some quality concerns. But I think recycled materials have found their place in the marketplace. There are a lot of places where it makes economic sense.

WT: And that is the whole point of this, it is not for the warm fuzzy feeling of saving the environment?

MB: Economics is what drives recycling, but it does provide an environmental benefit as well.

WT: Has Vulcan’s research shown that recycled concrete works for road base?

MB: There are projects where it is useful and good from an economic viewpoint. If you are [replacing] a concrete highway it makes sense to utilize the material that is already there. It works fine in parking lot applications and some city streets. There are some places where it is adaptable, and there are places where it has some favorable transportation economics, even in major urban areas vs. free-standing stone deposits.

WT: One of the major, and one of the smartest moves the aggregate industry ever did, was to clean up its image by cleaning up its operations: the berms, the flowers, etc. Do you ever see that level of sophistication coming to the recycling industry?

MB: There is absolutely no reason that a recycling yard can’t have a clean and pleasant appearance through housekeeping, building nice entrances, berms, putting in attractive landscaping and the like. I would be surprised if it doesn’t move that way over time.

WT: Compared to some industries, the natural aggregate industry is still relatively spread out, not even Vulcan controls a major share of the market. This is despite a rapid rate of consolidation in the industry for the past two decades. Do you see a similar consolidation in the recycling industry?

MB: I think that will be a much slower consolidation, mainly because there are more natural barriers to enter a fixed aggregate location than a recycling operation, such as land cost, permitting, the use of explosives, mobile equipment. Recycling is a little less capital intensive, so it is easier for a contractor, individual or aggregate producer to enter that arena.

WT: Vulcan has had success in recycling in some parts of the country. What is the company’s future role in concrete and asphalt recycling? What are you going to do long-term: go into it more, stay the course, still looking?

MB: I would put it in the still looking category. We continue to look at recycling on a market by market basis. Some markets are more mature from a construction standpoint and lend themselves to recycling activities better than others. I think that cities that have had a predominantly concrete history, both in road construction and in buildings, provide the raw material easier than cities that have been in a high growth profile. One thing we have not done, and I don’t anticipate us doing in the near term, is look for recycling operations in cities where we don’t also have some other aggregate operation. I suspect we will continue to link them together because, in the same marketplace, we will already have a sales force in place and can bolt on the recycling to our existing operations.