Monday, February 11, 2008

Global Warming Investment: Winter Storms Squeeze Supplies of Road Salt

There aren't any publicly held pure plays.
From the New York Times:

Local governments in New England and in the Midwest are running critically low on road salt, the result of a stream of winter weather that has hit the regions in recent months.

“We are, for all practical purposes, out of salt,” said Bruce Hoar, director of public works in South Burlington, Vt., adding that other towns in the area face the same problem.

With so many municipalities in need of salt, suppliers cannot ship it out quickly enough. Public works departments are left waiting for days or weeks to receive their orders....MORE

Here's the Salt Institute Members list.
Here's a WSJ story from 1994:

Big Salt Producer
Says Winter Storms
Are Mixed Blessing
----
Special to The Wall Street Journal


02/22/1994
The Wall Street Journal
PAGE B5D
(Copyright (c) 1994, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.)

AMSTERDAM -- The winter storms that battered parts of the U.S. have proved a mixed blessing for Akzo NV, the big Dutch chemical company.

Akzo is the largest producer of salt products in the U.S., including road salts. And with all the snow and ice this winter, salt has been selling like mad. But at the same time the extreme weather has made it harder for Akzo to do business.

"Yes, we're going to be more profitable because of the storms, but costs have also gone up," says Catherine Bolton, a spokeswoman for Akzo Salt in the U.S.

Akzo doesn't break out division sales, but analysts say the U.S. salt operations are substantial. The U.S. accounts for about one-quarter of Akzo's annual worldwide sales of more than 16 billion guilders ($8.25 billion). Those sales totals exclude the company's recent acquisition of Nobel Industrier AB of Sweden....