Aggregate Pit & Quarry
The industry — Non-metallic mineral mining and quarrying
Base industry report for 2123 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,028
- Under 10 employeesA
- 53%
- Establishments · USA
- 5,227
- Employment · USA
- 87,785
- Payroll · USA
- $6.7B
Of 1,028 Canadian establishments with employees, 53% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Structure decidesThe binding constraint is not executional. Being better than the incumbent does not, by itself, get you in — this one is cleared with capital, an asset, or a permission.
Raise or borrow the entry ticket, or buy an operator who has already paid it. The barrier is money rather than permission, so it yields to a balance sheet — and an acquisition is usually cheaper than a start.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 6
The binding constraint — entry cost + regulatory drag
Most of this group by count is sand, gravel and crushed stone; the rest — potash, salt, diamonds, gypsum — is nine-figure mining that was not examined. The record at Ready-Mix Concrete & Aggregates argued from structure that the permit is the business. This one tests that with a price series, and the test holds. Vulcan Materials shipped 226.8 million tons in 2025 at a freight-adjusted US$21.98 a ton, up 4%, and kept US$11.33 of that as cash gross profit, up 7% [A]. A commodity that holds a better-than-50% cash margin and raises price through a soft construction year is not behaving like a commodity; it is behaving like a local franchise rationed by licence. Ontario shows the rationing: 3,565 licences on private land produced 167.9 million tonnes in 2023, down 3.2% [A] — yet only 348 Ontario establishments are classified to this code, so a large share of those licences evidently sit inside road builders and concrete producers who mine for their own jobs. That is the entrant's problem from both ends. A new licence means years of rezoning, hearings and appeals with no revenue; an existing one is bid for by Vulcan-type consolidators and by the local paving contractor who needs the stone more than any financial buyer does. 53% of the 1,028 establishments have fewer than ten employees, and they are mostly families who got their licence decades ago.
Aggregate is worth about twenty dollars a ton at the gate and costs real money per kilometre to move, so each pit competes only with the handful of others that can reach the same job sites. National and provincial tonnages describe how many of these local markets exist, not a market an entrant can address. Potash, salt and diamonds in the same code trade internationally and are outside this screen.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vulcan MaterialsNYSE: VMCA | not disclosed | — | Consolidated revenue was not read for this record; the anchor is the unit economics — 226.8 million tons at US$21.98 a ton freight-adjusted, US$11.33 a ton of cash gross profit |
| Martin MariettaNYSE: MLMA | $6.2B | — | FY2025 total revenues, US$ |
| Heidelberg Materials / CRH / HolcimC | not disclosed | — | The international groups that own the large Canadian aggregate banners. Canadian aggregate revenue is not separately disclosed by any of them, and the banner attributions were not verified for this record |
| Licence-holding independents and captive contractor pitsA | not disclosed | — | 541 of 1,028 Canadian establishments have fewer than 10 employees (Statistics Canada, December 2023); Ontario has roughly ten licences for every establishment classified here, which implies many pits sit inside road builders and concrete producers |
Evidence
Evidence. Vulcan's tonnage, price and unit-profit figures were read in its Q4 and full-year 2025 results release [A]. Ontario licence and production figures were read in TOARC's 'Production Statistics 2023' — TOARC is trustee of the province's Aggregate Resources Trust and the official source [A]. The inference that many licences are captive is the analyst's: it compares a licence count with an establishment count from a different source and year, one firm can hold many licences, and neither source says who holds them. No Canadian per-tonne price series was found — Vulcan is a US operator and stands in for pricing behaviour, not for Canadian price levels. No pit transaction price was sourced, so 'paying for the moat in full' remains reasoning. Potash, salt, diamond, gypsum and peat operations in this code were not examined at all. The cut factor is analyst judgment. Martin Marietta's 2025 and 2024 total revenues, added with the competitive field, were read from its own XBRL company facts as filed in the 10-K of 19 February 2026 [A]; nothing else about Martin Marietta was researched, and its revenue is on the record as a second listed comparable, not as a Canadian figure. The Canadian banner attributions in the competitor block — Heidelberg Materials, CRH, Holcim — are UNVERIFIED and are named as groups rather than as sourced market positions.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
'Over 280 aggregate producers and suppliers in Ontario' per its About page; annual OSSGA Conference and operations tours.
BC aggregate producers' association; regulatory input and public information. No member count on site.
'200+ stakeholders' (gravel producers, consultants, suppliers, municipalities) per its homepage; founded 1974.
US crushed stone, sand and gravel producers and suppliers; runs the AGG1 Academy & Expo. No member count found on site.
NSSGA's aggregates equipment and education show; March 15-17 2027, New Orleans.
North Coast Media magazine for crushed stone, sand and gravel; runs the 'Drilling Deeper' podcast (episode 76 at check). Blocks curl; read via fetch.
Annex Business Media magazine for Canadian aggregates and roadbuilding. Blocked automated access (connection refused); live in search results.
Triennial construction and aggregates equipment show; next March 13-17 2029, Las Vegas.
Rock Products magazine and Heavy Equipment Forums blocked automated access and are omitted. The Institute of Quarrying (quarrying.org, UK-based professional body) is live but UK-centred.