Speaker 1:

From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business.

For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now, let's go inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glinn.

Lance Glinn:

Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House Podcast. Our guest today, Doug Dietrich, is chairman and CEO of Minerals Technologies. That's NYSE ticker symbol MTX.

Beginning as CEO in 2016, Doug has over 35 years of experience in industrial good, mining, metals and manufacturing, and is helping lead MTI into its next chapter in the specialty minerals space. Doug, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Doug Dietrich:

Thanks for having me here, Lance.

Lance Glinn:

So Doug, Minerals Technologies has such a unique footprint in the specialty minerals space. When you just think about the core identity of the company, how would you describe it to someone maybe unfamiliar with MTI, as well as maybe a little unfamiliar with the industry as a whole?

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah, so Minerals Technologies is a global specialty mineral company, so we mine and process minerals around the world. And we supply them to things that I don't think many people in the world know that they even exist. So billions of people around the world use our products or come in contact with our products every day.

We mine calcium carbonate and bentonite are two of our main minerals, and they only exist in certain places. And so, having minerals and having supply of them, and having really unique supply of them is really important. So Minerals Technologies grew up that way, we've built the company that way. And I can tell you a lot about the products that we supply.

Lance Glinn:

How is Minerals Technologies structured? And can you dive into some of the markets that you really operate in?

Doug Dietrich:

Sure. We operate in two, we call them segments, reportable segments. One is our Consumer and Specialty Segment, and the other is what we call Engineered Solutions. And the consumer side is one that we've been strategically growing. We've been putting ourselves in markets that are kind of growing with macro trends. We'll talk about that.

But consumer trends in terms of cat litter, specialty products, natural additives, animal feed products that are natural, consumption of paper and packaging, packaging, especially around the world has been growing. And so those are kind of things that you consume right off the shelf. We're either providing it right from our mind to the shelf and you'll consume it, or it's part of something you consume. And that's in the consumer side of things.

And there are environmental technologies, so water cleanup and landfill lining solutions, and building and construction, and major infrastructure tunneling projects. Those are products that we sell on the engineered side. So we have a consumer side of the business and we have an engineered solution side to the business.

Lance Glinn:

So we sit on the precipice of 2026, a year that will mark your 10th as CEO and mark MTI's 34th anniversary since the spinoff from Pfizer. As we turn the page to the new year, what do prospects for success look like for MTI over the next 365 days? How would you describe the overall momentum heading into 2026 for Minerals Technologies?

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah, it's been a strange year, I have to tell you. I think for many companies, but I think the changes that came in early this year with new administration put a lot of uncertainty into the markets. Tariffs, they're not the thing that necessarily affects MTI. Given that our minerals exist around the world, we mine and process and apply our technologies in regions. So we're not moving them as a big part of our business around the world, but it does affect our customers.

And our customers, as they move things cross border, it gave a pause. And I think some of that is reverberating, still reverberating through the economy. I think a lot of that settled down. I think we're in this kind of market that's not bad, but not great. It's been better by historical standards, but we can do well with this kind of market. And going into 2026, there's still some uncertainty out of there with some of the geopolitics. But I think with our technologies and with our products, and our strategy, I think 26 is setting up for a nice year.

Lance Glinn:

So it was in 1992 that MTI became an independent company. As I mentioned, coming on 34 years since the spinoff from Pfizer, became an independent company in '92, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I can assume, like most, if not all industries, the specialty mineral sector has obviously shifted and transformed from the advent of new technologies, changing regulations, so on and so forth.

Now, I don't want you to necessarily look back and describe the changes of the last 30 plus years 'cause that would take... I'm sure we could do a whole podcast just on that alone. But in the much more recent term, if we're looking at the last, I don't know, 5, 10 years, maybe since 2020 or so, how has the industry changed from when your tenure as CEO first began almost a decade ago?

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah. Well, it hasn't changed a tremendous amount. Critical minerals, we'll talk about probably rare earths as we get through it, but these are minerals that our functions, are parts of just about everything. And they're hard to replace. Because of the nature of the things that we and the industrial minerals industry supply, they're a fit for purpose. They have properties, natural properties that lend themselves to specific things. And so, it's not an industry that's going to be changed dramatically from its consumption.

That said, there are new technologies that we apply to these minerals to adapt to new applications. And we can get into that, like water treatment and we talk about forever chemicals. So, the application of our minerals to new markets is changing very rapidly. And so we can talk about how our company's name is Minerals Technologies and how we have these core technologies that we apply to our mineral base for a changing marketplace. But the consumption of minerals around the world has been growing and it's going to continue to grow because of the nature of what they are.

Lance Glinn:

And we're going to talk about some of those applications in just a little bit. But as I was doing my research, I was preparing for a conversation this morning, in big bold letters on your website is the phrase, "People power our success." What does that phrase really mean in practice? How do you ensure employees from the lab to the field feel valued and empowered in their role?

Doug Dietrich:

Look, I'm a mechanical engineer and I grew up through a process or system of operating a company through operational excellence and continuous improvement. It started with Toyota. It followed me through my career to Alcoa. And these are companies that applied kind of a people first, a people-centric approach to running a company. And what does that mean? And I know we're going to talk about AI, but people do and connections between people really matter. And empowering people to solve problems every day is kind of part of that.

And so, we let machines do machine work, we let people do people work, and we let people solve problems. And if you're wasting time in our company doing something that's wasteful, whether it's an accounting process or a manufacturing process, we look to engage you in problem solving to fix that. And so, we educate everyone in the company with tools to look at a problem and say, "Wow, why am I waiting for this report? Why am I waiting for this product? Why is my customer not getting their delivery on time?" And they gather and stop and they hold events called Kaizen events to remove the waste in that process, redraw that process, and then keep doing it. And that happens over and over and over every time at Minerals Technologies.

So, to do that though is engaging people. They come to work wanting to solve problems, and they come with their suggestions. We capture 65,000 suggestions from 4,000 employees every year. Think about that. We implement 72% of them. We hold 21 Kaizen events, these problem solving events every day, somewhere in the world. So when you have people coming to work and you find a way to engage people, they power everything. They solve problems.

We take those solutions and we've spread them across the company, and it's a really powerful way of running the company. We close our financial books in two and a half days. I don't think I've ever seen another company that can do it that fast. So when I got here, we closed the books in nine days, and then it took five more days to get reports. We now close the books in two and a half days, and by day five, we've already done our reviews and we've made corrections.

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Doug Dietrich:

So, the speed that people and problem solving can provide around a range of topics enables us to make corrections faster. And so this culture of waste reduction, continuous improvement, and having people at the center of this, we think it's a competitive advantage for our company.

Lance Glinn:

So let's start diving more in on the company. I'm going to start more broad and then we'll sort of work our way through the weeds. But when you look at the landscape of companies in the minerals and material space, what do you see as the key factors that really set Minerals Technologies apart? What just makes MTI different?

Doug Dietrich:

Well, I think it starts with that culture first, but also, you have to have good assets. So our resources around the world, we're the largest bentonite company or producer in the world, and we're one of the leading calcium carbonate producers, especially here in the United States. So I think having a broad and unique and very rare supply of your raw materials, and we're vertically integrated. And not a lot of minerals companies are. They own some of their raw materials and they've vertically integrated, but not all, and we're fully vertically integrated.

And being able to have that, but we operate in 34 countries. We have 136 legal entities, it's 18 currencies. We have all the breadth of a huge company, but we're only $2.2 billion or $2.1 billion company so we have to do things differently. You have to engage people and you have to ensure that everyone's on the same page around the world. We operate in China, Turkey, South America, just about every continent, and that's unique as well. There's a lot of regional players, but there's not a lot of global players. And so, being able to have those resources, have that culture uniform around the company, be vertically integrated, that's unique. And many of them are private. We're public. So that's another unique feature.

Lance Glinn:

Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but for many people, obviously, they don't really think about minerals on their daily basis, right? It's not something that always pops into the mind, so to speak.

So bluntly, I'll just ask you from your perspective, obviously as someone who really does think about minerals on a pretty much everyday basis, why do minerals matter, not just for industry, but for society as a whole and people's everyday lives?

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah, it's really interesting because you read a lot about rare earths, and they're not that rare, actually. They exist just about everywhere. They're just hard to get to because they're small fractions and processing them out is really, really hard to do. But there are other minerals around the world that are also crucial. And it's funny, 'cause I just spoke to an investor the other day and says, "Well, do you guys get into rare earth?" And I was like, "Well, no, we may have some in our orb, but we're not sure that's economically viable."

But if you don't have bentonite, you're not going to have the brake rotor, the suspension part or the steering column to be able to ride with that electric vehicle on. So, I think what people don't realize is how much these minerals and the ones that we produce touch your everyday life. From the time you get up, your toothpaste, the package you just got in the mail, the paper that's in front of you, your paints, coatings, the plastics in your car, your cat litter if you have a cat.

Lance Glinn:

As someone who does have a cat, yeah, I was going to ask you about that too, the cat litter.

Doug Dietrich:

So yeah, there's a very high chance that your cat litter is our bentonite, whether it's made by a branded customer or we're the largest private label supplier around the world. So, you're coming in contact with probably our product throughout your life, whether you're consuming it yourself on the shelf directly, whether it's in a product that you consume, or it helped make something like the steel, the foundry part, the water you drink, purifying the water you drink, it's helping that customer make a product for you. So they're everywhere.

And I think why they matter is because I don't think that's well known. And I think minerals are coming a little bit back into fashion. Strangely, I don't know why now, but I also say that, look, mother nature put these things in certain places and she doesn't care about geopolitics. And so, making sure that we use the world's supply efficiently and effectively for challenges that the populations face is crucial. And so, I think it's a great time to start talking about these things that are very rare, indeed, all of them, and the sustainable use of them, and even the recycling of them is becoming a big thing.

Lance Glinn:

And so, when we do hear about minerals in the news, you said they're becoming more into, I guess, our daily lives as we hear about them on whatever channel you decide to watch. When we do hear about minerals in the news, it often is in the context of rare earths and their roles in our lives.

MTI, obviously, as we've been talking about, deals with more specialty minerals, specifically bentonite and calcium carbonate. Why is it important though for people to look other than beyond those rare earths and more towards the minerals that you focus on?

Doug Dietrich:

Look, yes, part of our values is operating sustainably. So, making sure that we are using only what we need to use, and that we're remediating and taking, and leaving the earth better than we took it, in some sense. And that includes recycling and zero waste, all of these facets. But I do think over time, minerals and mining, the term has gotten a bad term, and probably rightly so. I don't say everyone's been a great actor in the world of mining in the past, but I would say the industry in total has really changed in terms of its sustainable use.

And I think what people need to know is that these minerals are critical to everyday life and to everything that we consume. And so, focusing on them as rare and as essential, but then also focusing on the fact that companies really are good actors in using these, especially in the industrial minerals. And that's important because it involves community relations. It involves the government relations. It involves permitting and access to them to keep this going.

It's been a challenge around the world through a lot of new regulation, a lot of it very good, but it makes it more challenging to access these and use them efficiently. And we need to just keep an eye on that and the importance of them, and make sure we balance all of this so that we can keep the economy rolling.

Lance Glinn:

So I want to talk more about bentonite and calcium carbonate. Let's start with just the two as a whole. Why are these two minerals so central to your business? What really makes them just so valuable?

I know we obviously talked about different applications, but why focus on these two and why make them sort of like the core minerals in your portfolio?

Doug Dietrich:

Well, I think part of that's historical. We could also buy or acquire or grow into other minerals, but we like to focus on being experts and central in two main minerals. And we have seven, eight, nine other minerals in our portfolio, but those are the core ones. I think what ties them together is the technology. When we spun out of Pfizer, we were largely calcium carbonate, and one of our technologies is the synthesis of calcium carbonate.

So we use what's called crystal engineering to... We can create a crystal of calcium carbonate to do something very functional. We can make it very small so that it can calcium fortify, its pure calcium, your non-dairy milk, or some food that you're eating. It's very small, so it stays in suspension in the drink. If it was big, you have to shake up the bottle, and consumers don't like to shake everything, so very small particles, but we can engineer that crystal.

We can also engineer our crystal to be really big, and really big so that it fits into paper or a packaging, a paper packaging to take up space. So, it's less material use or waste in that product. And so calcium carbonate, that's how we grew up with those technologies. And so in 2014, we bought a company that brought the bentonite to the company. And the reason we did that is because, A, they were the largest bentonite company in the world, but B, the bentonite is a very versatile mineral, and it lends itself to being able to apply the technologies that we had core to the company.

And so it was an extension, a media extension of being able to develop our technologies into a different mineral substrate. And so we focus, there are other minerals that we could apply our technologies to, but the opportunity set that we have in front of us in these two minerals is enough to continue to grow and expand around the world, and we have a strategy to do that.

Lance Glinn:

So bentonite is often called the mineral of 1,000 uses. But look, I'll admit before doing my research for this podcast, I've heard the word obviously before, but I didn't do much research into actually what it is and it's versatility. What makes it so versatile, to sort of get into the science of it, and how does MTI tailor it for such a wide variety of applications?

Doug Dietrich:

It is a mineral of 1,000 uses because of many aspects. And I can get completely engineer on you here, but we're scientists and I'm going to mess it up. But look, it has high thermal durability. It has high absorptive properties. It has a high surface area. So what I mean by that, is if you took a particle of bentonite and you could flatten it out, a teaspoon of it would cover a football field, a US football field.

So, having a surface area that is good for a lot of things, it'll absorb odors. You can modify the surface of it to do things like scavenge a PFAS molecule out of water. We have a large water purification business where we're cleaning up oil and gas, produced water, we're cleaning up drinking water, groundwater.

And so, being able to have bentonite as your substrate to then be able to modify its surface, or use it on its own for like cat litter, is very versatile. And calcium carbonate's the same. The thing about calcium carbonate is there's a lot of it in the world, but very little of it is pure calcium and low iron, low lead, et cetera. And so when you have one of these mines that had developed into this type of deposit, you have a very unique thing, and there's very few of those in the world.

Lance Glinn:

And when it comes to calcium carbonate, I know there are two versions for lack of a better term, right? There's that precipitated calcium carbonate, there's the ground calcium carbonate.

If you want to go all science on me, you can. Take me through the difference between the two and why those differences matter when it comes to applications, productions, and value to MTI.

Doug Dietrich:

So the company was founded around, we had both ground calcium carbonate and precipitated calcium carbonate. So here's where I'm going to get engineer on you. When you grind calcium carbonate, when you grind limestone into calcium carbonate, no matter how good you are at doing it, you're going to get a particle size distribution. I just drew a curve.

You're going to get some small particles, you're going to get kind of an average size particle, you get some large particles. When we create a crystal of calcium carbonate precipitated it through a solution, we can make one specific crystal.

Lance Glinn:

So it's consistent all the way through?

Doug Dietrich:

Right. So one particle distribution is singular. Right?

Lance Glinn:

Got it.

Doug Dietrich:

And so when you do that, it has a very specific application. And not only can we do just a very narrow particle distribution, we can make them different sizes, like I mentioned, very small, very big. And so that's an engineered crystal. And depending on the application, whether it's toothpaste, paper, packaging, glossy paper, whether it's paints and coatings, by being able to engineer that crystal, it becomes much higher value to the end use. And so that's just a technology that we have, and that applies to other minerals.

And ground calcium carbonate is something, it's also very... And you can put in processes to get a very narrow particle distribution, but sometimes it's cheaper to grind it. And the application, the end use of it is not of value that you need to put a highly engineered product, and so we will put in ground calcium carbon for that aspect or for that application.

Lance Glinn:

So in your 2024 sustainability report you wrote, and I'm going to quote you here, "Sustainable operations have never been a nice to have for MTI. They are a must have."

Unpack this a little bit for us. How does sustainability shape your strategy and the day-to-day decision making for Minerals Technologies?

Doug Dietrich:

Well, I think the sustainable use of natural resources is just core. Look, everyone talks about paper and packaging, and I know there's a lot of people aren't going to like this comment, but when you're using trees to make wood pulp and you're using the mineral content, trees grow back. Deforestation, I'm not going to get into all that, but yes, you can grow a tree in Brazil in 10 years.

The mineral content of that takes 300 million years, so it's a consumable that's not going to be replaced anytime soon. So being able to find ways of recycling that mineral, finding ways to make sure that the extraction of it is efficient as possible, that you're only taking what you need, and making sure that as it goes into the product, we have technologies to be able to take it back out and reuse it. Now, that's why I think looking at the sustainable use of minerals is so important.

Look, I think lowering our energy consumption, which also is good for the environment and lowers our cost. We can find ways of doing both things at the same time. And so it's always been a part of the company. But I think also, sustainability is core to the company because it provides a ton of opportunities for us. We're talking about groundwater and groundwater discharge and pollution.

Our technologies take impurities out of that groundwater and out of drinking water. And so, one of our fastest growing products is being able to remediate forever chemicals from groundwater and drinking water. That's an opportunity. It's right down what we do and what a mineral can provide. So, I think there's both good operating reasons and there's great market reasons.

Lance Glinn:

And I think that shows that you're really just innovating with a purpose as well. And I think when it comes to innovation, there may not be anything bigger in, frankly, my lifetime than obviously AI and its advancement over the last few years. And I know AI has been around for a long time. It's not really anything new, but it obviously has had its boom really since 2022.

And I've gotten answers from, "Wow, it's changing the industry. It really changes everything we do. You can throw out the playbook of the last 50 years. AI is reinventing everything." I've got answers like that. I've gotten answers like, "Oh, we use it for backend things. We use it for helping us write something up that normally would take us 2 hours and now takes us 10 minutes." So I've gotten a sort of mix of both. Where does AI factor in when it comes to Minerals Technologies?

Doug Dietrich:

Look, I think AI is revolutionary in terms of all sorts of different areas. I think for us though, we're taking a measured approach to it, and you may have heard that.

Lance Glinn:

I've heard that too.

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah. Look, I-

Lance Glinn:

Which I completely understand, right? It is still relatively new and it's widespread use for a lot of companies.

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah. Let me say, we're taking a measured approach only in figuring out how to best use it in a safe fashion. We have a lot of technology in the company and a lot of data. So first and foremost, being able to use it in a protective way that we're not sending data outside the company, and that was the first part of it.

But also, trying to figure out how it can help us. And we're using it quite a bit. In our mining, we've partnered with a company to do autonomous mining. So we have, right now, very large dozers that are out in the Western United States operating unmanned 24/7 in our mines.

And we're not doing that to replace the operator, the very skilled operator. We're doing that because we can use that AI device in less safe, not unsafe, but less safe conditions. So we don't run dozers at night. We can do that now. We don't run them if it's been very wet. We can do that now.

And so, being able to increase asset utilization through an intelligent device that's doing something, we find that to be a fantastic win. We're using it in technology. We're using AI to help us through material science. And so speeding up experiments, right? So using AI-driven tools to help us think through interactions of materials and develop things faster, and that's happening right now.

So, I wouldn't say we're not using it, measured means we're not using it. I think it's a very powerful tool and I think we're starting to use it in very powerful ways. We're just doing it and making sure that we're bringing people along with it and making sure it's co-use, and becoming more efficient with it.

Lance Glinn:

So you're also innovating with impact in a way. And I know 66% of new products in Minerals Technologies have a sustainable profile. And I mentioned it, your name is Minerals Technologies. So how do those technologies, those products, help customers both live and work more sustainably?

Doug Dietrich:

Yeah. We have what we call core technologies, and they're largely lined up with our four product lines, kind of crystal engineering, specialty additives, where we're taking a product that is very specialized in something that it functionally does for our customer's product. High temperature technologies, so these are things that are going to steal and foundry. And we have what's called modified surface modification.

And so we apply these technologies to our mineral products because they're very versatile, and we have a process of innovation that's really tied into our customers. And we pull that back into our innovation pipeline and we apply our technologies to try to figure out how to solve those solutions. And so, one of the things that we've tried to do as a company is speed up the innovation cycle. It used to take us 4 years from start to finish from an idea to commercialization that's now 14 months.

We used to have about 6 or 7% of our products that we sell every year were new products that we developed over the past 5 years. That's now 20% of our product lines. So, we think really cranking up the innovation engine to be able to provide solutions faster is really healthy to our growth rate and it's really solving problems faster for our customers. And so, what's happened is over the past 5 or 6 years, 66% of the new products or things that we're innovating have a sustainability kind of aspect to them, whether it's something that helps us make it more sustainably or helps our customer with a challenge.

Lance Glinn:

So Doug, as we begin to wrap up our conversation, the minerals industry seems to be sort of at an inflection point between, I guess, the push for sustainability, advanced technologies, and obviously the demand for these minerals.

From your vantage point, as we look at the broader industry first, then we'll look at MTI specifically, but from your vantage point, what does the future of the broader minerals industry look like from rare earths to critical minerals?

Doug Dietrich:

Oh, I think it's coming around. I think it looks great. Look, I think people are realizing that these are essential to everyday life, or at least they're reestablishing that understanding. And I think with some of the trade challenges that we faced, people are realizing that they don't always exist where you need them.

And so, making sure that we understand the free flow or the efficient flow of materials around the world is important to sustain industries, because not everything is made in one place, things are made all over the place, and I don't think that's going to change. And so we need to make sure that we have the mineral content to support it.

I also think some of the trends in the world toward whether it's pet ownership or whether it's natural ingredients and replacing synthetics, I think minerals are that natural ingredient that can play to that. So I think making sure that we recognize that, that consumers recognize it, and that the mineral industry stays sustainable and innovative, I think the minerals industry has a great road ahead of it.

Lance Glinn:

And I mentioned in one of my first questions, it's entering or Minerals Technologies is entering its 34th year since the spinoff from Pfizer, you're entering your 10th year as CEO in 2026. As you look ahead to the next chapter for Minerals Technologies, what's your vision for where the company is going in the years to come?

Doug Dietrich:

Wow, 10 years. I think-

Lance Glinn:

Has it flown by? First and foremost, have the 10 years just flown by for you?

Doug Dietrich:

Yes. I think there's any arc of any CEO career, but this one has been, I think, somewhat unique to anybody who started in 2016. I had a couple of years of getting your head around it and learning, and making sure you put what you want to do with the company on it. And then you hit COVID, and then you hit a massive inflationary timeframe, and then all of a sudden you hit tariffs and trades.

Lance Glinn:

And now, here we are with 2026 around the border.

Doug Dietrich:

So it's been a lot of fun. There's always a challenge around the corner, but yeah, I think those kind of years like that just make it go fast. So it's amazing it's been 10 years. But anyway, there's always going to be challenges ahead. I think Minerals Technologies is really well positioned to take advantage of some of the trends that are going on. We have a great balance sheet. We have great mineral supply, long-term mineral supply, which is to me the foundation of your assets. We've got a great culture.

I do think though that there are opportunities out there. I think the minerals industry can get more efficient. I think we can become more sustainable, more closely together in terms of both within regions and across regions. I think there's opportunities for acquisitions to help some of that efficiency and make a bigger scale. The minerals industry has always been relatively fragmented with smaller producers and I think some scale will help, both in an efficiency, a cost perspective and sustainable perspective. And so I think looking ahead, I think there's a lot of opportunities for the industry for that, and I think Minerals Technologies can affect some of that.

Lance Glinn:

Well, I look forward to seeing the next 5, 10 years of Minerals Technologies. Doug, thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House. Really appreciate it.

Doug Dietrich:

Thanks, Lance. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

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