Doe Run Company

The company that would become The Doe Run Company was founded as St. Joseph Lead Company in New York in 1864. In the "Old Lead Belt" of Southeast Missouri where the company operated, it was the dominant mining group. In 1887, the company purchased land to build a smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri. The lead processing smelter was built on 540 acres by the Mississippi River and began operations in 1892.

During its early history, St. Joseph Lead Company developed many tools, techniques, and safety processes that became widely adopted by the mining industry. Notable accomplishments included the roof bolt in the 1920s, and the St. Joe Shovel in 1922, which replaced hand shovels and increased daily employee productivity from 21 tons of rock to nearly 300 tons. St. Joe was also the first mining company to employ a dedicated researcher, starting in 1930, which expanded into a department.

With the gradual exhaustion of the Old Lead Belt after World War II, St. Joe explored other areas in southeastern Missouri and in 1955 found extensive deposits in an area that became known as the Viburnum Trend. The company owns six mines and four mills along the trend. Other companies also developed the area, but Doe Run owned all the mines and mills in the district by 1992.

The company changed its name to St. Joe Minerals in 1970, and was acquired by the Fluor Corporation in 1981. In 1986, St. Joe and another mining company, Homestake Lead, formed The Doe Run Company Partnership, which added Homestake's Buick mine, mill and smelter to St. Joe's operations. The Buick smelter was later converted to the Buick Resource Recycling Division for lead recycling in 1991.

The Renco Group, Inc., acquired The Doe Run Company from Fluor and renamed the company The Doe Run Resources Corporation in 1994 (although it continued to be registered to do business as "The Doe Run Company"). In 1996, Doe Run established Fabricated Products, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary, and acquired lead fabricating facilities. The following year, Doe Run more than doubled in size with the purchase of the La Oroya smelter and Cobriza copper mine in Peru from state-controlled Centromin for $247 million. Doe Run's Peruvian holdings would eventually be separated into a separate subsidiary of the Renco Group in 2007.

In 2001, regulators reported high levels of lead around Doe Run's Herculaneum lead smelter as well as in the blood of local children. Following this finding, Doe Run undertook a large-scale cleanup effort, purchasing approximately 160 homes and replacing soil for over 700 properties to bring the site back into compliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act. In 2010, Doe Run agreed to close the Herculaneum smelter and pay $65 million for past violations of federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts. The same year, Doe Run announced plans to replace the Herculaneum smelter with an electrowinning plant. However, in 2012 these plans were put on hold indefinitely. In December 2013, Doe Run closed the Herculaneum smelter, retaining just a small operation for refining specialty alloys and maintaining the site.

After the closure of the Herculaneum primary lead smelting facility in 2013, the company altered its business model to focus on its mining and recycling operations. In 2016, citing falling prices and environmental regulations, Doe Run downsized its lead production by approximately 10 percent and eliminated 75 jobs in its Missouri facilities. In 2016, the company sold 18 acres of its former lead smelter site in Herculaneum to Riverview Commerce Park LLC for redevelopment as a commercial port. Doe Run began demolition on the five main buildings of the Herculaneum smelter in 2017 as part of its redevelopment announced in 2012.

Overview

The Doe Run Company manages various parts of the lead lifecycle, including mining, milling, fabrication, and recycling, and provides lead metals, alloys and lead concentrates to companies globally. The company's headquarters are in St. Louis, Missouri, and Doe Run has holdings in Missouri, Washington and Arizona. Jerry Pyatt has been president and CEO of The Doe Run Company since 2012.

Doe Run employs approximately 1,100 people, and it invests in locals schools and infrastructure both financially and through employee community service.

Holdings and products

In the Southeast Missouri Lead District, Doe Run's mines are all on the Viburnum Trend, a 64 km long mineralized shoot with an average width of 150 meters, thickness of 3 to 30 meters and average depth of 300 meters. It is a classic Mississippi Valley type lead/zinc deposit in Cambrian carbonate rocks though it contains an unusually high proportion of lead. The principal minerals are galena (lead, PbS) and sphalerite (zinc, ZnS) with lesser amounts of chalcopyrite (copper, CuFeS2). Lead concentrates from the area contain more than 75 percent lead, versus an industry average of 45 to 50 percent lead.

Doe Run owns five mines on the Viburnum Trend: Brushy Creek, Casteel, Fletcher/West Fork, Sweetwater and Mine No 29. These mines produce ore that is milled at the company's four mills to extract lead, zinc, and copper concentrates. Approximately 90 percent of the primary lead supply in the United States has been derived from the ore from these mines over the years. Following the closure of the Herculaneum smelter, metal concentrates from the mines are shipped overseas for smelting.