Reed Minerals, a portfolio company of Speyside Equity, has completed the acquisition of U.S. Minerals, a fellow producer of coal-slag abrasives and roofing granules, and a portfolio company of Merit Capital Partners since 2010.
Reed Minerals makes the coarse grit that industrial crews blast at steel and other surfaces to strip off rust, paint and old coatings before repainting or repair — a process known as abrasive blasting — along with the mineral granules that coat asphalt roofing shingles. The company’s abrasives are sold under the Black Beauty brand and are made largely from coal slag, the glassy residue left when power plants burn coal, which Reed recycles and grinds into a hard, low-dust grit.
Reed supplies customers across the United States in bulk, bag and supersack — large woven bulk-bag — formats through a network of processing, packaging and distribution sites. The company traces its roots to the 1930s, when it developed a process for turning coal-combustion waste into roofing granules. For decades the business operated as part of Harsco (now Enviri) until Speyside carved it out as a standalone company in 2024 (Blasting Media Maker Acquired by Speyside in $45 Million Carveout).
U.S. Minerals, based near Chicago in Tinley Park, Illinois, is a recycler and processor of coal slag and copper slag that makes competing blasting media under the Black Diamond brand as well as slag roofing granules. With more than 35 years in operation, the company runs seven manufacturing plants and a distributor network serving customers nationwide. The sale of U.S. Minerals to Reed places the two coal-slag brands — Black Beauty and Black Diamond — under common ownership for the first time.
“We are very excited to welcome the USM team to the Reed family,” said Mike Kozak, the CEO of Reed. “The combination of these two strong companies will allow us to expand our operational footprint and strengthen our ability to provide our customers with the highest quality materials, responsive service and the right product for each and every application. We look forward to bringing together the capabilities and experiences of both organizations to create what’s next. We will integrate the two businesses in a way that strengthens our solutions offerings to the market.”
Mineral abrasives occupy a workmanlike corner of the materials industry. Coal slag and copper slag are byproducts of power generation and metal smelting that would otherwise be discarded; processed into uniform grit, they become an inexpensive, single-use blasting media valued for surface preparation because they cut quickly and contain little free silica, the fine dust linked to lung disease that has pushed users away from traditional sand. The same slags, crushed and colored, serve as the granules that give asphalt roofing shingles their surface. Demand tracks industrial maintenance cycles, infrastructure and marine repair, and residential roofing activity, and the field is served by a handful of regional producers that locate near the power plants and smelters supplying their raw material.For Speyside, the transaction is a bolt-on that scales a business it bought less than two years earlier, widening Reed’s geographic reach and product range in a fragmented industry where few producers operate nationally.
“We are happy to get this bolt-on acquisition completed as part of our value creation strategy for Reed,” said Eric Wiklendt, a Speyside partner and chairman of Reed’s board. “We believe that there are more opportunities in the space both domestically and internationally. This deal commences that strategy by creating a more robust platform from which to build.”
Speyside Equity makes control investments in middle-market businesses with revenues of less than $500 million and a history of profitability. Targeted portfolio companies often have balance-sheet, legal, environmental, labor, or transactional complexities causing financial or operational stress. Sectors of interest include specialty chemicals and minerals, metal forming and fabrication, plastics, building products, and food ingredients. Speyside focuses on transaction types such as spin-offs and carve-outs of large multinational businesses, industry consolidations, and family-owned businesses.
Speyside is currently investing through its third institutional fund, Speyside Equity Fund II LP, which closed at its $300 million hard cap in November 2025. Its two earlier vehicles are the $130 million Speyside Equity Fund I LP (2016) and the Speyside Equity Opportunity Fund LP (2023), a $620 million continuation fund built around portfolio company Opta Group.
Speyside was founded in 2005 and is headquartered near Detroit in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Reed supplies customers across the United States in bulk, bag and supersack — large woven bulk-bag — formats through a network of processing, packaging and distribution sites. The company traces its roots to the 1930s, when it developed a process for turning coal-combustion waste into roofing granules. For decades the business operated as part of Harsco (now Enviri) until Speyside carved it out as a standalone company in 2024 (
