The West Group reported a 6.0-percent increase in heritage aggregates shipments, which principally reflects the positive impact of the increased shipments to the energy sector and railroad industries. These achievements were partially offset by wet weather in our Midwest Division. Flooding at multiple Midwest Division facilities restricted both operations and sales, and served to increase production costs at certain locations. These conditions are a strong contrast to its prior-year record third-quarter operating results which reflected aggressive spending of ARRA funds by the state of Iowa, Nye says.

“Overall heritage aggregates product line pricing decreased 3.1 percent,” Nye says. “Two previously reported pricing trends continued in the third quarter. First, a higher percentage of shipments of base stone, which is used in both road construction and energy sector activity and has a lower average selling price compared with clean stone, contributed to this negative period-to-period comparison of selling price. Second, pricing on stimulus-related projects was 10 percent lower than our company average. We estimate that the impact of these factors negatively affected aggregate pricing by 160 basis points and expect this pricing pressure to ease as our end-markets continue to either recover or reach levels of sustained stability. However, competitive pricing pressure exists and opportunities to increase pricing will return one product and one region at a time.”