Big showing in the Show Me State

More than 440 attendees and 41 exhibitors were on hand at Margaritaville Lake Resort in Osage Beach, Missouri, for the Missouri Limestone Producers Association Annual Convention. Photo: Lauren Alexander, Capital Materials

More than 440 attendees and 41 exhibitors made their way to Osage Beach, Missouri, for the 2022 Missouri Limestone Producers Association (MLPA) Annual Convention.

Dan Kleinsorge, executive director of MLPA, says the event’s attendance was the highest it’s been in 11 years. That so many people attended is a good sign for the aggregate industry, he adds.

“It tells me the industry is healthy, the association is healthy [and] people are wanting to get engaged and [be] active,” Kleinsorge says. “That’s exactly what you want out of a trade association. Obviously, there are a lot of challenges. You hear about workforce development and supply chain issues. But, at the same time, work is really good. Work is busy and demand is high, and that translates into high attendance at our events. That’s a great sign for us.”

A driver of attendance at the 2022 convention was a roundtable discussion featuring Ward Nye, chairman and CEO of Martin Marietta; Kirk Farmer, CEO of Farmer Companies; and Scott Anderson, central region president at Summit Materials. Anne Noonan, CEO of Summit, was originally slated to take part in the roundtable but was unable to make it.

Roundtable fodder

Nye

During the roundtable discussion, Nye, Farmer and Anderson reflected on their companies’ respective 2022 performances before diving into topics such as the workforce, technology, sustainability, infrastructure funding and safety.

“In 2022, we had a lot of promise and we just could not get in front of the inflation,” Farmer says. “We thought it was going to be a great year, and we just could not get in front of the runaway inflation.”

Nye described the year that was as “ragingly OK.” He points to operation and safety numbers as markers of success for Martin Marietta, but he agreed 2022 was a tough year.

“You saw some aspects of [2022] that were green shoots,” Nye says. “We saw some other things pull back. Inflation was real, and it was hard to stay ahead of it. I think we all felt it.”

Anderson says successfully navigating the challenges of 2022 called for a unique type of leadership.

“When I took my first leadership position, my boss told me leadership is just dealing with problems and problem-solving,” he says. “I feel like 2022 [required] a lot of leadership. We had a lot of problems. Inflation was a big one, labor challenges were a big one, supply constraints were one – we got hit with a lot. We were very busy [and] we fought a lot of challenges, but we still inched out some growth. [I’m] very proud of the team and the agility they had to use to face and combat issues in the market this year.”

Nye says Martin Marietta recently partnered with schools that have an emphasis on aggregates, with the hope of attracting more people into the industry.

“Here’s my guess: [If] you get the dialogue [and if] you get them in your office, you’re probably going to hire them,” he says. “The trick is getting them to engage with you. When I’m talking to young people who are in a high school, a community college or college, and they’re not at Missouri-Rolla or Colorado School of Mines and you say: ‘I’m in the aggregates business,’ they’re glazed over a little bit.

“Once you start saying: ‘Let me tell you why this is compelling and let me share with you why this is not a job but, rather, why this can be a career,’ it’s a fundamentally different conversation,” Nye adds. “I think if we’re just shooting in the sky as birds go by – instead of picking exactly what we want to do – the results won’t change markedly.”

For Farmer, ongoing conversations about workforce center around younger workers – specifically reaching and retaining them.

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