In 1959, the Box family formed Oklahoma Cement Company, which later became OKC Corporation, a New York Stock Exchange company. In 1976, the company built cement production facilities in Louisiana and Oklahoma with a joint capacity of 1,150,000 tons. $50 million (approximately $180 million in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars) were invested in these two plants alone.

During this time period, Mr. Box’s family also built cement facilities in Texas and South Korea at the request of the U.S. government. Over time these plants were sold to European cement production companies that began penetrating the U.S. market in the early 1980’s.

OKC Corporation also owned a U.S. refinery, a U.S. pipeline, a Gulf of Mexico pipeline, as well as offshore oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, Ecuador and Australia. The refinery was in Okmulgee, Oklahoma with a pipeline serving those facilities. OKC also owned gathering systems in the Oklahoma City area as well as offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1981, the Box family formed one of the first publicly traded Master Limited Partnerships (MLP) in the United States. Tom Box later became President and CEO of Box Energy Corporation, which was formed in 1992 by conversion of the MLP into a corporation. Box Energy Corporation had a $228 million market capitalization in NASDAQ.

As president of a joint venture with Trammell Crow (“Box-Crow”), Tom Box was responsible for the design, construction, and operation of a 1,000,000 ton and $168 million cement production facility (approximately $307 million in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars). The cement plant was funded with $40.5 million of equity, $100 million of bank debt from a consortium of lenders and $27.6 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds for pollution control equipment.

Cement plants constructed by Box currently produce about 3.9 million tons annually, making up approximately 4% of U.S. production.