Pit & Quarry, May 2015

Pit Quarry partners with National Mining Hall of Fame P it Quarry publisher Rob Fulop announced a partnership with the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum at the annual Pit Quarry Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Dinner in Baltimore Through the partnership hall of fame inductees will be featured in the National Mining Hall of Fame in Leadville Colo It gives residence for the inductees and for their bios and for their life stories says Frank McAllister chairman of the National Mining Hall of Fame board So people can physically come and look at them and see them amongst their peers in the industry Pit Quarry Hall of Fame inductee plaques will hang near the entrance of the museum McAllister hopes to eventually incorporate a digital element to the museum Seventeen industry pioneers are now enshrined in the Pit Quarry Hall of Fame Rob Fulop and Frank McAllister Lehigh Hansons Stanczak receives top NSSGA honor The National Stone Sand Gravel Association NSSGA named retired Lehigh Hanson executive Michael Stanczak the recipient of the Barry K Wendt Memorial Commitment Award The award is the highest honor NSSGA gives The associations Stanczak Manufacturers and Services AGGREGATES FORECAST M S Division created the award According to NSSGA Stanczak recently retired as senior vice president and general manager for Lehigh Hansons Midwest Materials area in the companys North Region Stanczaks career began in 1974 with Material Service Corp Expect slower growth and for several reasons Conditions continue to improve across a broad number of segments for both construction and the economy in general Construction materials demand should increase about 5 plus percent per year from 2014 to 2016 The residential segment is getting stronger and it has recovered the most more than 120 percent between 2010 and 2015 But growth will be much slower for this segment for several reasons One is that the low hanging fruit in bust areas such as Las Vegas is gone Areas like Las Vegas have rebounded in both sales and pricing In addition home prices have increased substantially in most areas and are once again nearing challenging levels for many buyers Personal incomes have not grown much since 2011 as well making down payments and mortgage servicing difficult And the drop in energy prices while an overall plus for the economy is a short term negative for housing demand as Texas and other energy states experience a slowdown in employment growth Nonresidential demand is improving as total employment grows and financing becomes more plentiful Deal activity is growing and broadening into more categories and more regions As long as financing remains available this segment will grow Summit Materials debuts on NYSE Summit Materials Holdings Inc made its debut as a public company The company opened at 1990 a share on the New York Stock Exchange Summit Materials had priced its IPO of 2222 million shares of Class A stock at 18 a share according to the Denver Business Journal Summit Materials filed to go public in December The nonbuilding segment is not growing despite much better state and local budget balances due to flat to lower federal support for infrastructure There is a lot of talk about needs but finding the money will be a challenge In fact we do not think a solution will be coming this year Still the next two years look healthy for construction materials demand As always we live in strange times and the variances to the most likely outcome are large David Chereb Dr David Chereb has many years of experience forecasting construction materials and his web based forecasting models have captured every major turning point in materials demand for more than 15 years Chereb received his Ph D in economics from the University of Southern California He can be reached at david chereb@ sc marketanalytics com 6 PIT QUARRY May 2015 www pitandquarry com