Humdrum products, spectacular profits. With this simple recipe, the K & S group has been wowing the stock market. The company in Kassel is profiting from the boom in raw materials. In June 2006, it bought South America's second-largest salt production company, Sociedad Punta de Lobos (SPL), becoming a global player. The company cheaply extracts salt from a huge mine in the Atacama Desert, 600 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile. It ships the salt from its own port near the city of Iquiquie. Buying SPL allowed K&S to expand its business beyond Europe, increasing its salt sales by more than 50%. Patrick Benning and Alexa Meyer accompanied K&S's project manager in Chile, Karl-Georg Mielke, to see how the "white gold" is mined in the middle of nowhere.