Salt for human consumption ranks third. The Kroger Co. uses United Salt Corp.'s products for its private label. United Salt also makes its own private label for rural parts of Texas under the name Gulf Salt. The company supplies salt to Sysco Food Corp., a billion dollar food marketer and distributor, but its biggest customers by far are cattle ranchers. The company's salt is used for chemical processing, oil field fluids, road de-icing, hide curing, agricultural feeding and commercial and residential water softening.
Most people think it's just there, but they have no idea how it got there.
Morton Salt Co., a division of Morton International Inc., is the nation's leading salt producer. Behind Morton is Cargill Inc. and IMC Salt Co., a division of Illinois-based IMC Global. For perspective, Morton Salt Co. has 60 plants compared to United Salt's three plants, and United Salt probably owns about three percent of the market. That's despite all the negative reports about salt and health. Probably one of the most competitive areas of the trade involves the government bid for highway de-icing rock salt.