Brazil Minerals, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, is engaged in the business of acquiring controlling positions or significant positions with oversight roles in companies in Brazil in the minerals area or in industries related to minerals.

We are a leading, high margin manufacturer of gypsum wallboard and complementary finishing products. Our manufacturing facilities and sales efforts are concentrated in the eastern United States and eastern Canada. Gypsum wallboard is a primary building material used in new residential and commercial construction and repair and remodel ("R&R").

We sell our products in the new residential, R&R and commercial construction markets. Traditionally, the new residential construction market has been the most significant contributor to wallboard industry demand. It has also been the most volatile. During the most recent economic downturn, new residential construction contracted sharply, but has rebounded in recent years as the economy continues its expansion. R&R activity was also affected by the last recession but has also recovered with the broader economy. We believe that R&R construction will remain an important source of demand as existing U.S. housing stock ages and properties that were foreclosed during the downturn are rehabilitated. The commercial construction market encompasses areas such as office, retail, healthcare, hospitality and government building projects.

The Refractories segment produces and markets monolithic and shaped refractory materials and specialty products, services and application and measurement equipment, and calcium metal and metallurgical wire products. Refractories segment products are primarily used in high-temperature applications in the steel, non-ferrous metal and glass industries.

The Performance Materials segment is a leading supplier of bentonite and bentonite-related products. This segment also supplies chromite and leonardite and operates more than 25 mining or production facilities worldwide.

The Construction Technologies segment provides products for non-residential construction, environmental and infrastructure projects worldwide. It serves customers engaged in a broad range of construction projects, including site remediation, concrete waterproofing for underground structures, liquid containment on projects ranging from landfills to flood control, and drilling applications including foundation, slurry wall, tunneling, water well, and horizontal drilling.

The Energy Services segment provides services to improve the production, costs, compliance, and environmental impact of activities performed in oil and gas industry. This segment offers a range of services for off-shore filtration and well testing to the worldwide oil and gas industry.

The Company is a Delaware corporation, incorporated in 1954. The Company operates primarily within two industry groups, Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and Construction Products. The Company has identified two reportable segments in each of the two industry groups: the Heating and Cooling segment and the Evaporative Cooling segment in the HVAC industry group and the Concrete, Aggregates and Construction Supplies (CACS) segment and the Door segment in the Construction Products industry group.

Eagle Materials Inc. is a leading supplier of construction products, building materials, and materials used for oil and natural gas extraction. Our construction products are used in residential, industrial, commercial and infrastructure construction and include cement, slag, concrete and aggregates. Our building materials are sold into similar markets and include gypsum wallboard. Our basic materials used for oil and natural gas extraction include frac sand and oil well cement.

The Company was founded in 1963 as a building materials subsidiary of Centex Corporation (“Centex”), and we operated as a public company under the name Centex Construction Products, Inc. from April 1994 to January 30, 2004, at which time Centex completed a tax-free distribution of its shares in EXP to its shareholders.
We sell cement in six regional markets, including northern Nevada and California, the greater Chicago area, the Rocky Mountain region, the Central Plains region and Texas, and we sell slag in the greater Chicago, Illinois area and the greater Midwest area. We have three concrete and aggregates businesses, serve the areas immediately surrounding Austin, Texas, the greater Kansas City area and north of Sacramento, California. Gypsum wallboard is distributed throughout the U.S. with particular emphasis in the geographic markets nearest to our production facilities. We also operate a recycled paperboard business which sells internally to our wallboard business as well as to external customers. Oil well cement and frac sand are sold into shale deposit zones across the United States.

Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. is a leading supplier of aggregates products (crushed stone, sand, and gravel) used for the construction of infrastructure, nonresidential, and residential projects. Aggregates products are also used for railroad ballast and in agricultural, utility and environmental applications. The Company’s Aggregates business consists primarily of mining, processing, and selling granite, limestone, sand and gravel. The Aggregates business also includes aggregates-related downstream product lines (including its heavy building materials such as asphalt products, ready mixed concrete, and road paving construction services). The Company is also a leading supplier of cement, ready mixed concrete, and asphalt and paving services in some regions where being able to supply a full range of products is important for customer service. The Company’s Cement business produces Portland and specialty cements. The Company also has a Magnesia Specialties business that manufactures and markets magnesia-based chemical products used in industrial, agricultural, and environmental applications, and dolomitic lime sold primarily to customers in the steel industry.

Our Company has four reporting segments:

The Architectural Glass segment fabricates coated, high-performance glass used in customized window and wall systems comprising the outside skin of commercial, institutional and high-end multi-family residential buildings.

The Architectural Services segment designs, engineers, fabricates and installs the walls of glass, windows and other curtainwall products making up the outside skin of commercial and institutional buildings.

The Architectural Framing Systems segment designs, engineers, fabricates and finishes the aluminum frames used in customized aluminum and glass window, curtainwall, storefront and entrance systems comprising the outside skin and entrances of commercial, institutional and high-end multi-family residential buildings.

The Large-Scale Optical Technologies (LSO) segment manufactures value-added glass and acrylic products for the custom picture framing and fine art markets.

We are the only producer of potash in the United States and we are one of two producers of langbeinite, which we market and sell as Trio®. Potash, or "muriate of potash" or "potassium chloride," is used as a fertilizer in agricultural markets worldwide. Potash is also used in oil and gas drilling and stimulation fluids and in animal feed. Langbeinite is a low-chloride potassium fertilizer that also contains sulfate and magnesium that is used primarily in magnesium and sulfur deficient soils and on crops that need a low-chloride source of potassium such as citrus, vegetable, sugarcane and palm. It is also used as an animal feed supplement.

Hi-Crush Partners LP is an integrated producer, transporter, marketer and distributor of high-quality monocrystalline sand, a specialized mineral that is used as a proppant to enhance the recovery rates of hydrocarbons from oil and natural gas wells. Our reserves, which are located in Wisconsin, consist of "Northern White" sand, a resource that exists predominately in Wisconsin and limited portions of the upper Midwest region of the United States. The Partnership owns and operates a portfolio of sand facilities with on-site wet and dry plant assets, including direct access to major U.S. railroads for distribution to in-basin terminals. We own and operate a network of strategically located terminals and an integrated distribution system throughout North America, including our PropStreamTM integrated logistics solution, which delivers proppant into the blender at the well site.

Compass Minerals is a leading provider of essential minerals that solve nature’s challenges, including salt for winter roadway safety and other consumer, industrial and agricultural uses; specialty plant nutrition minerals that improve the quality and yield of crops; and specialty chemicals for water treatment and other industrial processes.

The largest rock salt mine in the world in Goderich, Ontario, Canada;

The largest dedicated rock salt mine in the U.K. in Winsford, Cheshire;

A solar evaporation facility located in Ogden, Utah, which is both the largest sulfate of potash specialty fertilizer (“SOP”) production site and the largest solar salt production site in the Western Hemisphere; and

Several facilities producing essential agricultural nutrients and specialty chemicals in Brazil.
Our salt business provides highway deicing salt to customers in North America and the U.K. as well as consumer deicing and water conditioning products, ingredients used in consumer and commercial food preparation and other salt-based products for consumer, agricultural and industrial applications in North America. In the U.K., we operate a records management business utilizing excavated areas of our Winsford salt mine with one other location in London, England.
Our plant nutrition business produces and markets specialty plant nutrition products to distributors and retailers of crop inputs, as well as growers worldwide. Our principal plant nutrition product in North America is SOP which we market under the trade name Protassium+. We also sell various premium micronutrient products under our Wolf Trax brand.

We sell our salt and plant nutrition products primarily in the United States, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom. See Note 15 to our Consolidated Financial Statements for financial information relating to our operations by geographic areas.
We significantly expanded our plant nutrition business with the acquisition of Produquímica Indústria e Comércio S.A. (“Produquímica”), which now constitutes our Plant Nutrition South America segment. This segment operates two primary businesses in Brazil - agricultural productivity, which manufactures and distributes a broad offering of specialty plant nutrition solution-based products, and chemical solutions, which manufactures and markets specialty chemicals, primarily for the water treatment industry and for use in other industrial processes. See Note 3 to our Consolidated Financial Statements for further discussion of this acquisition.