Commercial Metals Company ("CMC") together with its consolidated
subsidiaries manufacture, recycle and market steel and metal products, related
materials and services through a network including steel mills, commonly referred
to as "minimills" or "micro-mills," steel fabrication and
processing facilities, construction-related product warehouses, metal recycling
facilities and marketing and distribution offices in the United States ("U.S.")
and in strategic international markets.
We were incorporated in 1946 in the State of Delaware. Our predecessor company,
a metals recycling business, has existed since approximately 1915.
Our Americas Recycling segment processes scrap metals for use as a raw material
by manufacturers of new metal products. This segment operates 26 scrap metal
processing facilities with 13 locations in Texas, five locations in Florida,
two locations in Missouri and one location each in Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana,
North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
We purchase ferrous and nonferrous metals, processed and unprocessed, from
a variety of sources in a variety of forms for our scrap metal processing facilities.
Sources of metal for processing include manufacturing and industrial plants,
metal fabrication plants, electric utilities, machine shops, factories, railroads,
refineries, shipyards, ordinance depots, demolition businesses, automobile salvage
firms, wrecking firms, and small scrap metal collection firms.
Our scrap metal processing facilities typically consist of an office and a
warehouse building located on several acres of land that we use for receiving,
sorting, processing and storing metals. Our warehouse buildings are equipped
with specialized equipment for processing both ferrous and nonferrous metal
and one of our facilities has extensive equipment that segregates metallic content
from large quantities of insulated wire. Several of our scrap metal processing
facilities use a small portion of their site or a nearby location to display
and sell metal products that may be reused for their original purpose without
further processing.
Our five steel mills, located in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, South Carolina
and Texas, produce one or more of steel reinforcing bar ("rebar"),
angles, flats, rounds, channels, fence post sections and other shapes. We utilize
a fleet of trucks that we own or lease as well as private haulers to transport
finished products from the mills to our customers and to our steel fabrication
facilities. To minimize the cost of our products, to the extent feasibly consistent
with market conditions and working capital demands, we prefer to operate all
of our mills at or near full capacity. Market conditions such as increases in
quantities of competing imported steel, production rates at U.S. competitors,
customer inventory levels or a decrease in non-residential construction activity
may reduce demand for our products and limit our ability to operate the mills
at full capacity. Through our operations and capital improvements, we strive
to increase productivity and capacity at the mills and to enhance our product
mix. Because the steel mill business is capital intensive, we make substantial
capital expenditures on a regular basis to remain competitive with other low
cost producers.
Our South Carolina minimill manufactures a full line of bar-sized products,
including rebar, angles, channels, flats, rounds, squares, and fence post sections.
Our South Carolina minimill sells primarily to customers in the rebar fabrication
industry; however, it also sells to service centers, manufacturers of original
equipment, and the agricultural industry. Our South Carolina minimill ships
products to customers primarily located in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic regions
of the U.S., which include the states from Florida through southern New England.
In addition to the minimill, we operate a recycling yard, a steel fence post
plant, and an alloy briquetting facility located on or near the same site.
Our Americas Fabrication segment consists of our steel fabrication facilities
that bend, weld, cut and fabricate steel, primarily rebar; warehouses that sell
or rent products for the installation of concrete; facilities that produce steel
fence posts; and facilities that heat-treat steel to strengthen and provide
flexibility.
Our Poland minimill operates a flexible rolling mill designed to allow efficient
and flexible production of a range of medium section merchant bar products.
This rolling mill complements the facilitys other rolling mill dedicated primarily
to rebar production. Either rolling mill can feed an alternative finishing end
designed to produce higher grade wire rod. Our Poland minimill operation has
annual rolling capacity of approximately 1.3 million short tons.
Our Poland minimill is a significant manufacturer of rebar, merchant bar and
wire rod in Central Europe, selling primarily to fabricators, manufacturers,
distributors and construction companies. The majority of sales are to customers
within Poland. However, the Poland minimill also exports to the Czech Republic,
Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and other countries. Ferrous metal, the principal
raw material used by our Poland minimill, electricity, natural gas and other
necessary raw materials for the steel manufacturing process are generally readily
available, although they can be subject to significant price fluctuations.