CalMat Co., Inc. history

In 1947, the year it began selling a minority of its common stock to the public, California Portland Cement was manufacturing and selling Portland, plastic, and oil-well cements under the trade name Colton.

The company added a second cement plant at Rillito, Arizona, (near Tucson) in 1948.

By 1950 Consolidated Rock Products was producing cement and cement blocks and ready-mixed concrete as well as rock, sand, and gravel, and its railway had been replaced by a conveyor plant.

California Portland Cement added a third plant at Mojave, California, in 1956.

In 1961 the company formed a subsidiary, Arizona Sand & Rock Co., to manufacture prestressed concrete and ready-mixed concrete in Phoenix as well as to excavate rock and sand.

At the end of 1964, when it was one of the three biggest cement producers in the West, the company had capacity of 14 million barrels of cement, of which 6.5 million barrels were at Mojave, 4.5 million at Colton, and the remaining 3 million at Rillito.

In fiscal 1965 the firm had net income of $6.7 million on revenues of $40.3 million.

The company founded Spancrete of California, a manufacturer of prestressed concrete hollow-cored slabs and rectangular beams at Irwindale, California, in 1966.

In 1969 it acquired 54 percent of State Exploration Co. (later renamed Statex Petroleum, Inc.), an oil-and-gas exploration company.

Consolidated Rock Products earned $2.9 million on sales volume of nearly $50 million that year. It renamed itself Conrock Co. in 1972.

California Portland Cement branched into a new field in 1974, when it incorporated the Soldier Creek Coal Co.

By 1980, in addition to its other facilities, the company had cement bulk transfer terminals in Phoenix and at Santa Fe Springs, Fremont, and Stockton in California.

California Portland Cement had record net sales of $218.5 million and record net income of $22.7 million in fiscal 1981.

CalMat was created in 1984 through the merger of two public companies that were both founded before the turn of the century.

The proceeds for these sales helped CalMat earn a record $44.1 million on record revenue of $605.9 million in 1986, and to reduce its long-term debt to $30 million.

In April 1987, the first Calloway’s Nursery store, located in Richardson, Texas, opened for business.

New Zealand investor Ronald A. Brierley, holder of 19 percent of CalMat's shares through a Hong Kong investment firm, offered $40 a share, or nearly $1 billion, for the company in March 1988.

In 1989, the company recorded a loss of $1.9 million, which was trimmed to a $545,000 loss the following year.

Onoda exercised its option in 1990.

About the only bright spot was the properties division, which accounted for 35 percent of profits in 1992 on only 4 percent of revenues.

Elliott, Suzanne, “Road to Riches May Be Paved with Asphalt,” San Bernardino County Sun, February 3, 1993.

That's up from a net loss of $21.37 million, or 92 cents a share, on net sales and operating revenues of $370.31 million in 1995.

In 1996 the company fared better, earning $9.3 million on $407.2 million in revenues. Its long-term debt was $98 million in mid-1996.

The Texas market, ranked as the third largest in the country, generated an estimated $1.6 billion in sales in 1999, a total that excluded the sales recorded by mass merchandisers, who did not separately report nursery product sales.

In August 2000, the company reported the most profitable fiscal quarter in its history, posting $3.2 million in the third quarter.