Rock Salt Prices Up
All accross the country rock salt prices are up. The Advocate runs a sotry on how it affects municiaplities locally. I wonder, what’s happening globally. From the Motely Fool in February:
Compass Minerals (NYSE: CMP), which was spun out of Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) earlier this decade, is a sultan of salt. Its rock salt mine in Goderich, Ontario, is the largest in the world, and Compass’ various facilities spit out more than 10 million tons of salt per year. The company’s highway deicing segment accounts for the majority of sales volume, but higher prices for more refined consumer and industrial salts make for a relatively even revenue split.
My main takeaways from Compass’ annual report filed with the SEC are that its salt business offers:
- stable demand and cash flows across economic cycles
- low-cost, high-grade mines with long reserve lives, and
- the ability to steadily raise prices over time
Remember Oil prices? Remember investors? Co-inky-dink? I think not. Take a look at the stock price for Compass over the lat year compared to the S & P.
From the Advocate:
Other municipalities are feeling the pinch as well. In Darien, town officials purchased 500 tons of salt from Morton at 71.77 cents per ton. Price increases for salt are common, but this year’s spike was much higher than usual, Darien Assistant Director of Public Works Darren Oustafine said. From 2006 to 2007, the price rose only 1.49 cents per ton. In comparison, this year the town experienced a jump of 22.38 cents, a 32 percent increase.
Fortunately, Darien still has a salt reserve from last year, Oustafine said. The stockpile is likely to last through the winter, but Darien officials are willing to add to the salt budget if this winter brings more icy weather than expected, he said.
“If we need more money we get it because we can’t leave ice on the roads,” Oustafine said. “We have a budget that we work from every year, but we never know how much it’s going to snow.”
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has asked the state Department of Consumer Protection to investigate the price increase. Rich Harris, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said the office does not suspect price fixing.“Nobody is suggesting there’s any kind of market manipulation here,” Harris said.
source: Advocate, Municipalities feel the pinch of higher rock salt costs, By Magdalene Perez, 12/01/2008
