Jon Conrad wore a hard hat and bright orange safety vest, surveying the southwest Wyoming landscape around him.
“This is the penthouse, as I call it,” Conrad said, standing on the roof of TaTa Chemicals’ soda ash refining plant outside of Green River. He heads up governmental affairs for the company.
Before Conrad is what looks like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory laid out between the desert and mountains. There's a general factory hum emerging from huge warehouse buildings, steam stacks, conveyor belts, a network of railcars and enormous piles of what looks like white and brown dirt.
“The brown is raw trona, and then finally, as we look over here to the northeast, you'll see the finished product, which we'll go look at,” Conrad said.
That finished product is Wyoming’s biggest export: soda ash. It’s made out of trona mineral, which is mined about 1,600 feet below where Conrad is standing, and then refined into a fine white powder. It goes into things used everyday across the world, like glass, cell phone batteries, kitty litter and detergents.
It’s an industry that relies on a global market. Pres. Trump’s tariffs and the trade policy responses from other countries could throw a wrench in the demand for Wyoming’s product. Conrad said they’re stuck in a bit of a holding pattern right now.
“It's kind of a terrible business strategy, really, not knowing what's next, with very little insight based on the hurricane that this has created,” he said.
Conrad descended from the “penthouse” to show off the gut of the operation, where hard trona rock is turned into soda ash.
Inside the refining plant, it’s upwards of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Machinery noises echo off the walls, like surround sound alarms signalling production.
There’s giant spinning concrete tanks, miles of pipeline and a dusty haze lit up by bright green lights.
“It's got to be crushed, crystallized, calcined, centrifuged, etcetera, to make the white soda ash,” Conrad said.
In the most simplest of terms, the product goes from solid to liquid to crystal to a mush, and finally, to a fine powder.
Conrad scooped up a fresh batch. It kind of looks and feels like beach sand.
“Yeah, it’s almost like laundry detergent, if you didn't know,” Conrad said.
That’s because it almost is. Soda ash is a main ingredient for detergents, like what’s produced at the nearby Arm and Hammer factory.
But the majority of Wyoming’s soda ash is shipped internationally. That’s where it could face geopolitical speedbumps from Trump’s tariffs.
“It's a little bit of a two fold. Some good, some bad,” Dylan Bainer, a principal economist for the state of Wyoming, said in a phone call.
Bainer said U.S. tariffs could force more domestic use of Wyoming’s soda ash. But he added reciprocal tariffs imposed by the countries that buy it are cause for concern.
“Those tariffs cause our goods to be more expensive going into other countries. That could certainly pose some potential demand problems,” he said.
That could threaten Wyoming's $1.5 billion industry and thousands of jobs.
“It's 65% of all Wyoming exports,” Bainer said. “It's kind of a staggering number.”
If worldwide demand declines for Wyoming’s soda ash, China is ready to pick up the slack with its cheaper, synthetic product.
Back at the soda ash plant in Sweetwater County, Conrad said Wyoming already actively competes with China.
“We're trying to hold them back, because they're a threat,” he said. “But if some of our overseas markets don't want to compete or pay the tariffs, they'll probably turn to China, where there are no tariffs.”
Conrad said TaTa Chemicals has the capacity to produce more soda ash in Wyoming, which means more money and jobs flowing in, but they’re waiting to see how global politics shake out.
But in the meantime, it’s production as usual.
“See that ash coming out?” Conrad asked as freshly made soda ash funneled into train rail cars. “That's about 100 tons each.”
From here, Wyoming’s little known product will be shipped for use across the world.
