Reflecting on the 2024 construction materials market (Part 1)

The following transcript was edited for brevity and clarity from one of two concurrent Jan. 31 discussions at the 2025 Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference at The Wigwam Resort. Part 2 can be found here.

KEVIN YANIK (PIT & QUARRY): Producers, tell us about your aggregate sales in 2024. How did they compare with the previous year? How did production volumes trend, and what impact did weather have? Also, did your company mix in any new products?

For the equipment suppliers and others, share your observations of the 2024 construction materials market. Tell us about your equipment sales in the last year. Did your sales to the aggregate industry meet or exceed your expectations?

DAMIAN MURPHY (PECKHAM INDUSTRIES): Our 2024 year was probably off 10 percent from a volume standpoint versus the prior year, but our pricing was certainly better than the prior year. I think it was rooted in interest rate challenges and the uncertainty with the elections. I think the outlook for ‘25 is pretty decent, but 2024 was off about 10 percent.

RONALDO DOS SANTOS (ANDERSON COLUMBIA): Ours was down 10 percent, as well. It varies in different geographies. As far as the infrastructure work we do, we have more growth in Texas and not so much in Florida.

KRISTIN SWEENEY (US AGGREGATES): We saw volumes probably static from 2023 to 2024. We did see a really nice increase in certain products on selling prices, which was encouraging.

In terms of the weather, we’re in the Midwest. At the beginning of the year, it was unseasonably warm. So, we saw a really strong Q1 and Q2. It was a little wetter than usual in 2024, so it kind of evened out. But by the finish of the year, it was a pretty strong year for us.

We did not necessarily see any new products, but we experienced heavy demand on the ready-mix side of the business.

SCOTT ALEXANDER (SUMMIT MATERIALS): Overall, we started 2024 not really knowing what to expect and thinking it might be down or flat, at best. But it ended up being a very good year for us.

I can really only speak to the Western region, where my responsibilities are for Summit. But we’ve had significant growth in volumes. A lot of that was due to acquisition. Phoenix was a great new market for us, and we’ve made a few acquisitions there – and we continue to expand in other markets.

Last year, in anticipation of a flat to down year, we moved away from having subcontractors. Prior to that, the demand was so strong we couldn’t keep up. A real issue was people, so we ended up using a lot of contract crushers. We moved back to that in the fourth quarter of 2024, and we have several of them going right now for 2025 because demand is so strong

PHIL BERRY (NORTH AMERICAN MINING): Nationwide for us, we were 8 percent off. The first two quarters of the year went pretty well across the board. But in the second half of the year we saw some markets experience falloffs as big as 30 to 40 percent.

Florida got hit by a couple of hurricanes, so that really impacted us. I’m cautiously optimistic about 2025. We’re kind of thinking ‘25 is going to start off a little slow, but that it will grow as the year goes.

RYAN MORALES (GULF COAST SAND): We’re based in the Gulf Coast, and I’m going to be the outlier. We were up about 20 percent in volumes for 2024. Pricing was, more or less, flat to slightly up.

On our industrial sand side, our volumes are up 160 percent and our ASP (average selling price) is up 109 percent. A lot of that is tapping into new markets. We’ve delivered to about 42 states.

Then, we have a retail side, which encompasses 50 states. We’re seeing a lot of growth on that side. A lot of that growth is driven because of a bit of a lag in the public funding side along the Gulf Coast ranging from Louisiana and Mississippi.

GEOFF HAWKER (HAZEMAG): As the first supplier speaking, I can say we had a record year in capital savings. It was really backlogged into 2023, leading into 2024 and then, throughout 2024, our service business was through the roof. We had one of our best years in a long time.

The capital intakes and new machines that producers buy from us slowed a little bit over the course of the year, but we see that in every election year. 2024 was very politically challenging, but our experience is to wait and see what will happen. Now that the election is over and with optimism very heavy in the industry around that, our project level has picked way back up. So, we’re very optimistic for the upcoming year.

DOMINIC NASSO (BUFFALO): In 2024, we saw smaller but frequent orders. There was kind of a hesitation toward the end of the year given the election. Now, we’re seeing things kind of open up with larger stocking orders, more optimism and bigger orders going forward.

JEFF GRAY (SUPERIOR INDUSTRIES): I would kind of explain 2024 as a transitional year for our company as a manufacturer. We came into 2024 with pretty high backlog levels – record high – and we probably chewed away at the backlog for nine to 10 months. We’ve seen our backlog on a slow growth since the fourth quarter of 2024. We met our expectations, though.

ALEX KANARIS (VDG): Our business in 2024 in all other industries fell about 9 percent. However, in aggregates, we had a 6 percent uptick in our business. We are hopeful this is going to continue.

CHAD GREENFIELD (SYNTRON MATERIAL HANDLING):2024 was a solid year for us. We were down from ‘23, but that was only because we had some major projects in ‘23 that were kind of outliers that we don’t see every year. We did see a slowdown coming into the back half of the year.

CHRIS WILLIAMS (CAPITAL AGGREGATES): We started expecting to be down in 2024 slightly, but some fortunate project awards drove us to a flatter year and an incredibly favorable product mix that drove ASPs more than even pretty aggressive price increases had been driving. That created confidence for us to invest in some new plants in core and key markets.

ANTHONY KONYA (KONYA MINING COMPANY): The first two quarters of 2024 were down pretty heavily due to weather in our area. We had a lot of rainfall that contributed to most of our customers being down 30 to 50 percent. That bounced back a lot in Q3 and Q4.

Knowing that was predominantly based on the weather, we elected to build our inventories substantially. So, we’re going into 2025 with a lot of optimism, good inventory levels and we think there’s good runway here, depending on the weather and not having that sort of same occurrence with near-record-rate fallout.