Capital got its start in 1973 when Capital Sand began operating. Its second company, Capital Quarries, was founded in 1979. Both companies are headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, and have operations in Missouri and Arkansas.
According to Capital’s websites, Capital Sand has 11 locations (eight in Missouri and three in Arkansas), and Capital Quarries has 22 locations (20 in Missouri, two in Arkansas).
Capital Materials and Hedger Aggregates were recent additions to the Capital brand. In 2016, Capital acquired 12 APAC (Ashland Paving & Construction) Missouri locations from CRH throughout central and western Missouri, which ultimately became Capital Materials. Along with those 12 quarries, Capital Materials has six asphalt plants and serves nine states throughout the Midwest.
Hedger Aggregates, which consists of two sand and gravel sites in the Jonesboro, Arkansas, area, was the company’s most recent addition. It was acquired from Summit Materials in 2018.
Jones hopes this growth continues and establishes Capital Aggregates as a company that, in his words, deserves a seat at the table with other producers.
“We want to be seen as an industry leader in this space,” Jones says. “Farmer Companies has been thought of as a ready-mix company. We want people to realize that we have this full aggregate arch and we’re able to do deals with [companies like] CRH and Summit Materials. We’ve added some pretty good-sized operations and have not skipped a beat. We feel like now, with the team members we have in place, we can keep adding onto these pieces.”
Williams says combining four smaller individual companies into one should be more appealing to vendors in their space.
“When you’re managing 11 million tons, you’re seen differently than if you’re managing 3 million tons,” says Williams, who joined Capital in November 2021. “We hope to leverage that management structure to help us with costs and [other factors].”
Moving forward, Jones says any additional companies acquired would “more than likely” fall under one of the current companies within the Capital Aggregates umbrella. If there are operations where the company would take on additional partners, though, it is able to start another company that still falls under Capital Aggregates.
“We want to prove that we can brand ourselves as Capital Aggregates,” Jones says. “But we can have other investors or other ownership entities because we’re already dealing with that right now.”
Between the recent growth Capital has experienced and the steady stream of work it has seen so far in 2023, now was the perfect time to make this change.
“Being this busy and then being able to share our resources across company lines, it’s made all the difference in the world,” Jones says. “From sharing all of our assets to our personnel – we restructured our sales team, putting them by region instead of by company – I think it will be a help to the contractors, as well. Instead of dealing with two separate salesmen for one job, you’re dealing with one person.”
