Compass Minerals

Compass Minerals International, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	: CMP S&P 400 Component
Industry	Mining
Founded	2001 in present form, some parts go back to 1844
Headquarters	Overland Park, Kansas, United States
Key people	Fran Malecha (CEO)
Products	salt, sulfate of potash
Revenue	> $US 942 million annually (2012)
Number of employees	1,778 (at the end of 2012)
Website	www.compassminerals.com

Compass Minerals International, Inc is a United States listed public company that, through its subsidiaries, is a leading producer of minerals, including salt, magnesium chloride, sulfate of potash and other plant nutrition products. Based in Kansas City, the company provides bulk treated and untreated highway deicing salt to customers in North America and the United Kingdom and plant nutrition products to growers worldwide. Compass Minerals also produces consumer deicing and water conditioning products, consumer and commercial culinary salt, and other mineral-based products for consumer, agricultural, and industrial applications. In addition, Compass Minerals provides records management services to businesses throughout the United Kingdom.

Compass Minerals is the biggest:

In 2012, Compass Minerals had total sales of $942 million and ended the year with market capitalization of just $2.5 billion. The company is part of the S&P MidCap 400 Index, the Russell 1000 Index and was included in Fortune magazine’s 2010 listing of the “100 Fastest-Growing Companies.” Though the company’s history stretches back as far as 1844, Compass Minerals became a public company following its initial public offering in December 2003.

Underground salt mining produces rock salt using both drill-and-blast and continuous mining techniques in deep deposits. Compass Minerals is the largest rock salt producer in North America and the U.K. It operates underground salt mines at Goderich, Ontario, the largest salt mine in the world with an annual capacity of 9 million tons; Cote Blanche, Louisiana, with annual capacity of 3.4 million tons; and Winsford, Cheshire, United Kingdom, with annual capacity of 1.5 million tons.

Mechanical evaporation uses high-efficiency vacuum processes to produce high-purity, fine- and coarse-grained salt products for commercial, agricultural, and industrial applications. Compass Minerals is a leading producer of mechanically evaporated salt in North America. It operates mechanical evaporation salt facilities in Lyons, Kansas (annual capacity 450,000 tons), Unity, Saskatchewan (160,000 tons); Goderich, Ontario (130,000 tons); and Amherst, Nova Scotia (130,000 tons). Compass Minerals also operates an SOP evaporation facility at Wynyard, Saskatchewan, with annual capacity of 40,000 tons. (Source: Compass Minerals 2012 Annual Report)