A Connecticut-based company has purchased Wyoming’s largest trona mine for $1.6 billion.
The multinational company FMC has owned the Green River trona mine for more than 60 years, but last fall, it announced that it would sell off the business to pay down debt. Tronox, a company that’s primarily involved in titanium mining, appears to have been the highest bidder.
In a conference call with investors, Tronox CEO Tom Casey indicated that the company is not planning major changes to operations at the mine, which is the largest employer in southwest Wyoming.
“We’re going to operate it as a separate business, so there’s no a lot of elimination of duplicative functionality, and so you won’t see a lot of head-count reduction, you won’t see a lot of SG&A [selling, general and administrative] costs coming out the way you would in a transaction in which we were going to integrate two businesses.”
Trona or soda ash, is used in manufacturing glass, paper and detergents, among other things. It’s Wyoming largest export.