Tomorrow’s World Today® Podcast
It all starts with one idea. Visit the Worlds of Inspiration, Creation, Innovation, and Production as we explore the topics shaping tomorrow’s world. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Tomorrow’s World Today® Podcast
Digging Deeper: Covia’s Formula for Products and Progress
Learn more about: Covia
Featured on: Season 5 Episode 5 - Tomorrow's World Today
Ever wonder what's inside your kitchen countertop or the sand trap that ruined your golf score? Andrew Eich, former President and CEO of Covia, pulls back the curtain on the fascinating world of industrial mineral mining, revealing how these essential materials become part of our everyday lives.
With operations spanning 42 sites across North America and 2,000 employees, Covia stands as the first crucial step in countless manufacturing supply chains. ⛏️
"What we provide is the very basic, foundational ingredients that go into making products that people use every single day," Eich explains, challenging the perception that mining is simply "digging up sand."
Eich's personal journey from paperboy to mining executive offers powerful insights for anyone navigating their career path. His diverse portfolio of early jobs built foundations for leadership success, a humble approach that underscores continuous learning. "No matter how far you go in your career, you never have all the answers, and that's perfectly okay," he advises, encouraging listeners to embrace curiosity and say "yes" to new challenges. 🔦
The conversation takes a surprising turn when addressing environmental concerns. Far from the industry's "dirty business" reputation, Eich details Covia's 17-year sustainability commitment, including sites recycling 98% of water usage, solar farms powering operations, and innovative land reclamation that transforms former mining areas into community parks. These initiatives demonstrate how responsible resource extraction can align with environmental stewardship while strengthening business performance.
Whether you're interested in business leadership, manufacturing processes, or sustainability innovations, this episode offers fresh perspectives on the materials that build tomorrow's world. 💎
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Welcome to the Tomorrow's World Today podcast. We sit down with experts, world-changing innovators, creators and makers to explore how they're taking action to make tomorrow's world a better place for technology, science, innovation, sustainability, the arts and more. On this archive episode, host George Davison, who is also the host of the TV series, tomorrow's World Today interviews Andrew Eich, the former president and CEO of Covia. Andrew reflects on his leadership role, highlighting the importance of fostering team alignment and encouraging innovation. He addresses the mining industry's reputational challenges, emphasizing Covia's commitment to environmental stewardship. Andrew stresses curiosity, resilience and the value of learning from failures, so welcome to the show.
George M. Davison:Thank you, george. Pleasure to be here. Well, I was hoping that we'd spend some time together to give some insights into our audience in the world of business and some personal things that may be helpful for them to understand along the way. Okay, why don't we talk a little bit about Covia, so they know the business that you're running? Sure, could you brief us?
Andrew Eich:Yeah, so Covia is what we call an industrial mineral mining company. I tell people when I describe the company that we are the first step in the value chain for many of the earth and we are one of the largest diversified mining companies in North America that produces the necessary ingredients that go into making those products.
George M. Davison:Sounds like a big job, and Covea provides basic ingredients for manufacturers to make things.
Andrew Eich:That's right. I think that's a great way to describe it. You're first introduced to our business, probably in a science class geology things like that where you'll learn about rocks and what makes up those rocks. That's really the starting point for what we do I like to tell people. I'm an amateur geologist at heart, but yeah, what we provide is the very basic, foundational ingredients that go into making products that people use every single day.
George M. Davison:All right. So with that understanding, can we get an idea? Who was this entrepreneur, who started this organization? What's the backstory?
Andrew Eich:Sure. Well, it wasn't just one entrepreneur, it was actually several. And there was our company dates its history back over a hundred years, where single sand mines were established by individuals and over time, a couple of key entrepreneurs began to buy those mines and form a company and over the last call it 10, 20 years, a couple of entrepreneurs really made those into very large businesses and today we have over 42 sites across the US, canada and Mexico. But in 2018, two of the largest business owners actually combined to form Covia, and that's what we operate today is essentially 42 sites in Canada, the US and Mexico.
George M. Davison:Wow, big operation it is. You have about how many employees.
Andrew Eich:We have about 2,000 employees. Most work in the operations, and I would say that the teams that we have are among the most dedicated and committed people I've ever met. That's wonderful. So do you do some interviewing along the way? I do a fair amount of interviewing Not like this, though.
Steven Ruffing:Well, hopefully we'll be hiring you after this interview.
George M. Davison:But no, I think it's important that the people coming up in the world understand you know what kind of jobs are out there and so what type of people or jobs do you hire for?
Andrew Eich:Yeah, we hire for all kinds of jobs we have. If you start at the beginning of what our process is, in our business we have a team of geologists, so these are folks who are experts on rock formations and mineral deposits and can help us figure out where the right minerals are in the properties that we own, all the way to logistics and operations and sales, finance, legal really every function and every type of job that's out there. We have some form of that absent, maybe healthcare, some form of that sitting inside of our company.
George M. Davison:Wow, All right. So, as a CEO, could you tell us you know what's it like being a CEO? Sure.
Andrew Eich:So my job is essentially to set strategy and make sure that the company can execute on that strategy. So what does that really mean? What that really means is I'm responsible for ensuring that our people are focused on the right things to make Covey a success, and so a big part of my job is cheerleading. So a big part of my job is cheerleading. A big part of my job is talking to our people, making sure they all understand where we're going and why and, importantly, what their role is in getting us there. And that's the really fun part about Covea is that everybody plays a part in our success, and we talk about that a lot. Whether you work in the mine or you work in the corporate office or anywhere in between, everyone plays a really important part, and that's what's helped us become successful.
George M. Davison:Well, that makes a lot of sense because it is a team of what? 2,000 people, 2,000. And keeping them all moving in the right direction I imagine can be a challenge.
Andrew Eich:It can be. It can be. It takes a lot of communication and it takes a committed team of people who are very focused on the success. We're lucky to have that.
George M. Davison:So you haven't always been a CEO, have you? No, no, all right. Well, did you walk us back in time and let's talk a little bit, if we could, about? Did you have a first job when you were in high school?
Andrew Eich:My first job was a paperboy at age 14.
George M. Davison:Hey, you're really aging yourself. Yeah, I know. Do they still make those? Yeah, no.
Andrew Eich:My dad would wake up and deliver 200 papers in the morning. Yeah, I don't think they do that anymore. 200 papers in the morning yeah, I don't think they do that anymore. But I tell people I think I've had almost every job there is to have leading up through college. So I've paved roads, I've worked in construction, I've delivered papers, I've been a waiter, I've sold extended warranties at electronic stores, you name it. I've done it all. Yeah, well, that's great though I mean to have so. Did somebody inspire you to go out and get your first job, when at the time I didn't think much of it and I found it to be fairly annoying? But what I found by the time I got to college is those experiences helped me prepare for the more rigorous challenges of college and then, after college, your first job and how to operate and how to be successful.
George M. Davison:Wow, that's well said. I've had similar, you know, experiences to yours in the way of working when I was younger, and the things you take away from there and play, you know, play it forward as you go forward in life, and so thanks for bringing that up. And is there a mentor, though, that you had somewhere in your life other than your parents, the teacher or anybody else?
Andrew Eich:Yeah, I I've been very lucky. I've had a lot of mentors, and that's something I always tried to seek out at different stages of my life, because what I've learned is, no matter how far you go in your career, you never have all the answers, and that's perfectly okay, and so I've been very blessed to have mentors. Through high school, I've had great teachers who helped me realize that I could do more than I thought I could. I've had really great mentors in business who helped point me in a direction that I may have been unsure about and give me the confidence to explore it, and all those people played a role in shaping my life and my career path. So that's one thing I would say is mentors are very important, and they can come in all different shapes and sizes and from all different walks of life, and so it's really important that you find those people and you leverage what they have to offer.
George M. Davison:I was lucky to have that too. A lot of mentors along the way and started at a very young age.
George M. Davison:It makes a difference. Yeah, it makes a big difference in the rural country somewhere and you don't have access to a CEO or someone that might I'm a CEO as well trying to get exposure and say some leadership discussions going with people who are running corporations or, let's say, running let's even the mayor's office, for that matter. They're very busy people and usually they're willing to share some time. So it's all right to be proactive and talk with the older people and ask for some advice along the way.
Andrew Eich:Absolutely, and you'll find most people want to share and they want. You know I've been very lucky to get where I am and you know there's certain things I've been able to do that I look back on my life and say, well, that was a good move, I'm glad I did that.
George M. Davison:Yes, and sharing that experience, you know happy to do that, that's great, and you're doing it now, and so you know kids or young folks coming up. You're our future. And just so you know, I wasn't perfect. Andrew wasn't perfect either, when he was younger. So how about we talk a little bit about what did you do along the way that you said, oh, that wasn't such a great idea.
Andrew Eich:How much time do you?
George M. Davison:have.
Andrew Eich:Oh, that's been lots of times in my life where I've had missteps that oftentimes led to greater things.
Andrew Eich:Because of the missteps, because you learn from them and you move on. I was fortunate enough to spend some portion of my career living in Asia, which was a great experience, but I made a ton of mistakes in that job, because I was one of the only Americans in an office filled with over 100 people from Japan, and so trying to do things the American way in a Japanese office doesn't work, and so, through constant failure, I learned how to work in an environment where I was the minority and had to learn their cultural ways to get things done, and that became a great. What started off as a really big weakness ultimately became a strength of mine, especially when I returned back to the US, because I learned how to work with all different walks of life and become more adaptable, and I think that's a key leadership attribute. That takes time and effort. You don't learn this in school. It's how do you adapt yourself to make whoever you're talking to or working with feel more comfortable in a way that you can help influence outcomes.
George M. Davison:Yes, that's a great lesson.
Andrew Eich:Yeah.
George M. Davison:Sometimes getting just kind of dunked down under the water. You have to figure out a way to get back up there. Such good life lessons can come from that Exactly. So around here we call that failure way forward. Yeah, or fail fast I've heard that one a lot too so you can move on and use that knowledge that you've gained now toward your future and avoid other missteps. But well, thanks for that. Sure, all right, let's see here If you could do one thing in high school over what would it be.
Andrew Eich:When I was in high school, I did not like the sciences, and mainly because I found them to be really hard.
Andrew Eich:And now I work in a company where science is so important, whether it's geology or math. You know the science around process, process engineering. It's very important, and what I have found is it took me a while to learn that side of the business, and so what I would the biggest mistake I made in high school, which I would encourage others to not do is when you're in high school, you don't have't like it and you may not like it then, but when you get to college, you might actually say hey, you know, I did that in high school, I'm going to go try that again, and then you love it. It's an incredible age to explore and experiment with all kinds of things, and so join different clubs, join the student government, do the science clubs, play sports, you know, create a well-rounded experience for yourself, because you will be surprised at how you will pick on those things later on, later in life, and draw from them in other parts of your career and in your personal life. That's great advice.
George M. Davison:Great advice, All right. So, hobbies, do you have time? I love to.
Andrew Eich:I have a vegetable garden, so I grow vegetables and love to ski with my kids. So we do a bit of that and like to travel whenever we get a chance.
George M. Davison:That's wonderful. You know the three kids, one in high school, yeah, all right, so let's talk to that high schooler for a moment. Okay, If I was listening in on a conversation about, let's say, a more advanced learning, maybe going to college or maybe just focusing on STEM or STEAM and getting into one of the I don't know, maybe becoming a welder or something else that provides good value, you know what kind of things would I be hearing?
Andrew Eich:Well as of last night. You would have heard. Last night my son and I were talking about his upcoming biology test. He's a freshman and it's a difficult class, and so he's worried about how to get a good grade, and I talked to him about when you move into high school, the classes get more challenging, and one of the first things you have to do is figure out how to figure it out, and so that boils down to what are the study habits you need to develop, what are the types of questions you need to be asking in the classroom, and how do you put yourself in the best position possible to do well in school. So that's what you eat, that's your sleep, that's making sure you're spending the right amount of time on the right things, and so he would hear that speech pretty often.
George M. Davison:We had similar ones to that. We talked about good stress and bad stress. Yeah, it's understanding, you know yourself and how to prepare properly and whatnot. But for clarity, good stress is you know the test is coming and if you start to prepare and take little nibbles at it, let's say a week or two in advance, you know that's stressful, but you didn't wait to the last minute Exactly.
George M. Davison:Waiting to the last minute and cramming, that's bad stress and it causes all sorts of other challenges along the way Lack of sleep, you don't eat properly, and a lot of other things could happen. That's right, yeah, so we have good stress, bad stress, dialogues with our kids along the way, lack of sleep, you don't eat properly, and a lot of other things could happen. That's right, yeah, so we have good stress, bad stress, dialogues with our kids. My kids are now a little older, so my last one's off to college now. Congratulations, thank you. Back to the empty nest, yeah, all right, yes, okay. So if you were going to give advice to a person entering into your industry, what would that advice sound like?
Andrew Eich:I would say that what's fascinating about our industry? A lot of people hear oh, mining business, you just dig up sand and you put it in a truck or a rail car and you send it. And, frankly, when I first got introduced to the company, I had the same reaction, but when I got inside the company I realized how complicated the business was. Um and so what I would say is is that if you, if you enjoy complex problem solving, get excited because that's what we do. We have you know, when you think about what our business is.
Andrew Eich:We, we dig up material and then our goal is to sell every single grain of sand that we dig up to the right customer for the right functional reason. And it takes a very it takes great teamwork between your sales team and your marketing teams and your operations team and the geologists and everyone else to figure out how to do that the best way possible. So the advice I'd give is be curious when you're inside of the company and say yes to everything, especially early in your career. Take on every challenge that's thrown to you, because it'll do two things It'll help you progress inside the company, but it will also give you great exposure to all different elements and areas of the business, and what you end up finding is the place you start is very rarely the place you end. And so try lots of things. Same advice for high school Try many, many things, because it takes time to figure out in your life and in your career what you ultimately want to do and be good at.
George M. Davison:All right. Well, I'm curious now that you've made that statement. Let's say I'm a customer of Covea and let's say that we manufacture toilets. Let's say, and we want to feature something new in our toilet line. Would we talk to your people and say we're trying to do this with a future style of a toilet. We're having trouble thinking that we could mold this. Let's say Would we talk to your people and then they would help to brainstorm and find solutions for that challenge.
Andrew Eich:Yeah, so now you're getting into my favorite types of questions, which are around innovation, and we partner with our customers all the time to redesign and reshape our products to help them achieve some functional benefit. So toilets, for example. I mean what we sell are clays and kalens which are used to form what are called prepared bodies, which are the molds for the toilets, and so the shape, the color, the size of the material that we sell will all influence the how that product is made.
Andrew Eich:We have other products that we sell where we apply chemistries to it, so we'll apply a special coating to it that will provide additional benefits. Sometimes we'll apply heat to minerals, which will change the physical structure and the color of the material, and that allows it to do different things for the end customer. And so that's a partnership and a collaboration that we engage with our customers to figure out what can we do as a supplier to help them achieve their goals. That's fun.
George M. Davison:I like that whole idea. How about sustainability? Are any of your customers coming to you and asking about what can your raw materials do to help us make a more sustainable, greener product? Do you have anything like that?
Andrew Eich:Absolutely so. Sustainability for us is part of our DNA. We have put out a sustainability report, I believe, 17 years in a row now, so this is not a new topic for us, and we approach it in a number of ways. So with our customers. They are desperately seeking new products all the time that will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or improve the safety of their employees. Silica can be a dangerous material if you breathe it in, and so we've designed products that we coat around our silica, that reduce the amount of dust in the air Nice and make it a safer material to work with.
George M. Davison:As an example, I just flashed back to when I was a boy we used to have to go out with hoses. When I was a boy, we used to have to go out with hoses. When I was a kid, I used to work at an asphalt company in a town where I used to live and we'd have to go out in the morning before it got real active, because it was going to be a hot, dry day, oh yeah, and just to keep the dust down. Oh yeah, just be everywhere.
Andrew Eich:Yeah, and asphalt, that's a tough summer job.
George M. Davison:I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore.
Andrew Eich:Yeah, I paved roads. I remember running a hot lance and that was really. That was a brutal job, right.
George M. Davison:My mother. She said you're going to do this job, so you learn why you want to get a better education. You don't want to do this your whole life. Well, that was a few bad summers.
Andrew Eich:Yeah, well, it appears to have worked. It pushed me in the right direction, right.
George M. Davison:That's right, all right. Well so, innovation in the workplace, young people coming up. If I wanted to be a young person and to become successful, you know, would understanding science, stem, steam, technology. You know science, technology, engineering, art and math. Does that play an important role in your opinion toward bringing up young people toward the field of innovation?
Andrew Eich:Absolutely it is. I mean, that is the. Those are the key disciplines to learn to be effective at innovation. And there's all kinds of innovations, you know. There's product innovation, which we've talked about. There's process innovation, which is more internally focused innovation. We're doing that all the time in our business.
George M. Davison:So process, running the business process in getting minerals out of the ground for transportation, et cetera. Is that what you're getting at?
Andrew Eich:Yes, all of it, and it can be at your plants. How do we get our equipment to produce more of the material? It can be in your corporate offices. It takes us a week to do this every month. How do we make it happen in five days? What process changes do we need to make to do that? It can be in the way you meet with and approach your customers, our sales team, and that's where the computer and application technology really are important as well. So, whether it's information technology or any of the sciences and math as well, from engineering perspective, you know there's all kinds of different disciplines that you can, you know, find the one that sets your heart on fire and lean into that and then put yourself in a place where you can really push innovation.
George M. Davison:Right. So innovation you have a marketing department, right yeah, Do you create all sorts of new marketing materials, frequently storytelling to your customer base, that kind of thing.
Andrew Eich:We do. We actually have a campaign that we put on some of the social media sites where we talk about what our products do and why they are so critically important to the end product. So we don't talk a lot about piles of sand. What we talk about is our specially treated Cristobalite sand is used as a functional additive for countertops like your desk over there, and so we talk about how our product provides the bright whiteness you see in a white countertop that you can buy at a store Nice when we talk about. You know, we recently shipped several thousand tons of bunker sand for a golf course from Ohio all the way to California, because our sands have the right color and angularity that make the best sand bunkers on a golf course.
George M. Davison:So now you know why your golf score is going up.
Andrew Eich:That's right, Andrew he's sitting right here. We make your sand bunker experience memorable, all right, Andrew, he's sitting right here.
George M. Davison:We make your sand bunker experience memorable. All right, what is one project that you think your industry has struggled with but you think would elevate mankind the most?
Andrew Eich:That's a great question. I think that the mining industry as a whole has suffered reputational problems in the past, and I think that it's got a stigma a bit around being a dirtier business, which is not true in the case of Covia. We have sites that recycle 98% of the water that we use. We have solar farms that we build outside of our sites to produce electricity to power our plants and, most importantly, we're working on the next generation of products that are going to have a meaningful environmental benefit for our customers. So a lot of the more advanced materials that we're producing today are replacing materials that our customers are buying from overseas.
Andrew Eich:That's important, because when you're mining something overseas, you got to ship it all the way to the US. There's a lot of greenhouse gas emissions that come with sea freight, and so finding ways to produce the materials as close as possible to the customers reduces the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that the product, and so there's lots of things that we do as an organization to create a positive environmental impact, and not just environmental. Whenever we go into a location, our goal is to leave it in a better place than when we found it, and so mining reclamation is a really important aspect of what we do. When we're done mining out the area, we want to turn that into a park or athletic fields or whatever the town and the people in the local community want us to turn it into. We partner with them to create a unique space that is better than when we found it.
George M. Davison:You know it just makes good business sense being a good steward right it does. It actually helps the numbers and helps the company become more strong. It actually helps the numbers and helps the company become more strong. There's so many opportunities to just do the right thing and then you benefit as a business. The numbers get better, so all the investors and whatnot are happier as well.
George M. Davison:I also look at it this way. Now that you say mining has a kind of a stigmatism to it In the world I operate in, I don't really think that way. I'm in the world of innovation, it's what I do, it's all I practically do, and one of the things I know about it is that it's messy. When you go to create or invent, you know we create all these crazy things and then all of a sudden it's well, that's not going to work, scrap this and scrap that, and before you know it you're 10 to 20 to a hundred prototypes in and you're finally getting to the right answer. Well, all of this is all now garbage and scrap, right, but eventually you get to that right solution. It's kind of like that first computer that was, you know, invented. It was like 10 times the size of this room Right, and now it's kind of like that first computer that was invented. It was like 10 times the size of this room Right, and now it's this little tiny thing that we carry in our pocket and it's way more powerful than the old days.
George M. Davison:Exactly so the idea of digging up minerals and having mines to me it's a necessary ingredient to create the other good things that we need in our lives, absolutely the other good things that we need in our lives, absolutely. I respect what you're saying. It's great that you're working on good environmental decisions, getting sustainability. It makes sense to have mines near your customers because transportation costs go down, etc. Etc. Exactly Business 101 stuff, but I don't really think of it as messy. I just think it's just part of a process that we need to have that we go through and then we get more efficient as we go at it. Absolutely.
Andrew Eich:And it is messy and it can be messy. I think the most important thing is that companies like Covea and our industry peers, we do it the right way, and you do it because it makes good business sense, but I also like to think that we do it because it's also just the right thing to do. Yes, and I think that a lot of companies who operate in our space work really hard to do the right thing and create. You know, we, our minds, are operating in very remote places in some cases and so in many cases, we are the only employer in that area cases, we are the only employer in that area. So we're creating jobs and creating a vibrant local economy, which is important to us and it's important to the people that are affected. Way to go.
George M. Davison:Thank you. All right, let's see here. I think we have. This is the last big question. Okay, what do you think is the next big innovation in your industry?
Andrew Eich:What do you think is the next big innovation in your industry? Yeah, I think the next big innovation is going to be for so I would break that into two components. In our specific industry, we are going to continue to push the envelope of what the minerals can do for our customers and so marrying together our process technology with other chemistries to create, you know, ultra fine particles that can be used as functional fillers for paints and plastics or coating those materials to give them, you know, brand new benefits and features in our customers process. We'll continue to innovate along that way, I think, and so that's product innovation for us.
Andrew Eich:I think the next big innovation internally and in our company is we are going to continue to figure out how to do more with less, and what I mean by that is, I mentioned we have a site in Wisconsin that recycles over 90% of its water. We've got the technology and the know-how to do that, and in places that are stressed for water, that technology is very important. So we'll continue to invest in that technology and bring that to bear across our company. We'll look for ways to automate process, because that creates more efficiencies and reorient our teams and our people toward the more complex areas of our business. That's a big innovation for us as well.
George M. Davison:Well, thank you for being here with us today. Thanks for having me, andrew, it was a real joy, and thanks for sharing being a mentor to all of our audience out us today. Thanks for having me, andrew, it was a real joy, and thanks for sharing being a mentor to all of our audience out there today. All right, everybody. Well, thank you.
Steven Ruffing:Thank you for listening to this episode of Tomorrow's World Today podcast. Join us next time as we continue to explore the worlds of inspiration, creation, innovation and production. Discover more at tomorrowsworldtodaycom. Connect with us on social media at TWT. Explore and find us wherever podcasts are available.
