Steel Dynamics Inc Company Profile

Steel Dynamics, Inc. was incorporated in Indiana in August 1993. The primary sources of our revenues are from the manufacture and sale of steel products; processing and sale of recycled ferrous and nonferrous metals; and to a lesser degree, fabrication and sale of steel joist and decking products. Our operations are managed and reported based on three operating segments: steel operations, metals recycling and ferrous resources operations, and steel fabrication operations.

Hot rolled Products. Our flat roll mill produces hot rolled products that include a variety of high quality mild and medium carbon and high strength low alloy hot rolled bands in widths from 40 inches to 62 inches and in thicknesses from .500 inches down to .043 inches. We also produce an array of lighter gauge hot rolled products, including high strength low alloy and medium carbon steels. These products are suitable for automobile suspension arms, frames, wheels, and other unexposed parts in auto and truck bodies; truck, trailer and recreational vehicle parts and components; mechanical and structural steel tubing; gas and fluid transmission piping, building and construction products; rail cars; ships, barges, and other marine equipment; agricultural equipment and farm implements; lawn, garden, and recreation equipment, industrial machinery and shipping containers; and highway guard rails. We believe that our basic hot rolled material has shape characteristics that exceed those of other thin-slab flat roll steel mini-mills and compares favorably with those of the integrated steel mills.

Cold Rolled Products. Cold rolled steel is hot rolled steel that has been further processed through a pickler and then passed through a rolling mill until the desired gauge, or thickness, and other physical properties have been achieved. Cold rolling reduces gauge and hardens the steel and, when further processed through an annealing furnace and a temper mill, improves uniformity, ductility and formability. Cold rolling can also impart various surface finishes and textures. Cold rolled steel is used in exposed steel applications that demand higher surface quality or finish, such as exposed automobile and appliance panels. As a result of higher processing costs, cold rolled prices are typically higher than hot rolled prices. Cold rolled material is often coated or painted.

Coated Products. Hot rolled or cold rolled steel can be coated with zinc to render it corrosion-resistant and to improve its paintability. Galvanized, galvannealed, Galvalume®, electro-galvanized and aluminized products are types of coated steels. These are also the highest value-added sheet products because they require the greatest degree of processing and tend to have the strictest quality requirements. Coated steel is used in high volume applications, such as automobiles, household appliances, roofing and siding, heating and air conditioning equipment, air ducts, switch boxes, chimney flues, awnings, garbage cans and food containers. Our paint lines in Butler and Jeffersonville incorporate state-of-the-art coil coating equipment with quick color change capability and on-line color matching this allows us to produce pre-painted steel products that are used in many of these same end products.

We produce various structural steel products such as wide flange beams, American Standard beams, miscellaneous beams, H piling material, American Standard and miscellaneous channels, bulb angles, and zees.

We are currently capable of manufacturing standard rail grades in a range of weights from 115 lbs. per yard to 141 lbs. per yard, in highly desirable 240 feet rail lengths, which no one else presently produces in or imports into the United States or Canadian rail markets.

We are capable of producing a broad line of engineered SBQ products. SBQ products are uniquely designed for applications ranging from gears and shafts to mining equipment and oil patch tubing.

We are capable of producing a broad line of merchant steel products consisting of angles, plain rounds, flats, channels, and reinforcing bars of various lengths and sizes. We also produce various sizes and grades of billets.

We produce or fabricate specialty steel sections and custom-finished products, which are placed directly into customers assembly lines. Our flexible manufacturing capabilities enable us to meet demand for a variety of custom-ordered and designed products. Many of these products are produced in small quantities for low volume end uses.

Our metals recycling operations primarily involve the purchase, processing and resale of ferrous and nonferrous scrap metals into reusable forms and grades.

We produce an array of ferrous products used in foundry and steel mill applications for use in our own steel mills or for resale to other customers through a variety of methods, including sorting, shearing, cutting, torching, baling, shredding, briquetting and breaking. Our major ferrous products include heavy melting steel, busheling, bundled scrap, shredded scrap and other scrap metal products such as steel turnings and cast iron. These products vary in properties or attributes related to cleanness, size of individual pieces and residual alloys. These factors are determined by the specific needs and requirements of the consumer and affect the individual products relative value. We process nonferrous products, including aluminum, brass, copper, stainless steel and other nonferrous metals for use in foundry, mill refining, and smelting applications. Our Superior Aluminum Alloys operations produce specification aluminum alloys in the form of ingots, sows and molten metal. In addition, we provide transportation logistics (truck, rail, and river barge), management services, marketing, brokerage, and consulting services related to the scrap industry.

Steel fabrication operations produce steel building components, including steel joists, girders, and trusses. Our individual joist products include bowstring, arched, scissor, double-pitched and single-pitched joists. Our Butler, Salem, and Lake City plants also produce a full range of steel roof, form, and composite floor decking.

Steel processors and service centers typically act as intermediaries between primary steel producers and the many end-user manufacturers that require further processing of hot rolled coils. The additional processing performed by the intermediate steel processors and service centers include pickling, galvanizing, cutting to length, slitting to size, leveling, blanking, shape correcting, edge rolling, shearing and stamping.

The principal customers for our structural steel products are steel service centers, steel fabricators and various manufacturers. Service centers, though not the ultimate end-user, provide valuable mill distribution functions to the fabricators and manufacturers, including small quantity sales, repackaging, cutting, preliminary processing and warehousing.

Merchant bar products are sold primarily to steel service centers as well as joist, rebar, OEM fabricators, while billets are sold to other steel mills.

Steel of West Virginia operations generally sell into smaller niche markets.

We sell processed ferrous scrap to end-users such as steel producing mini-mills like ours, integrated steelmakers, foundries, secondary smelters and metal brokers who aggregate materials for other large users. Most of our ferrous-scrap customers purchase processed scrap through negotiated spot sales contracts which establish a quantity purchase for the month. The price we charge for ferrous scrap depends upon market demand and transportation costs, as well as, the quality and grade of the scrap. In many cases, our selling price also includes the cost of transportation to the end-user.

Our fabrication primary customers are non-residential steel fabricators. Other customers include metal building companies, general construction contractors, developers, brokers and governmental entities. Our customers are located throughout the United States with a concentration in the eastern half of the country.

Competitors. Our Flat Roll Divisions products compete with many North American integrated hot rolled coil producers, such as U.S. Steels plants near Detroit, Michigan, Granite City, Illinois, Gary, Indiana, Dravosburg, Pennsylvania, and Fairfield, Alabama; AK Steel Corporations plant in Middletown, Ohio; and Mittal Steels facilities in East Chicago, Illinois, Riverdale, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, Indiana Harbor, Indiana, Burns Harbor, Indiana, and Sparrows Point, Maryland. Our hot rolled products also compete with the products of a number of hot rolled mini-mills, such as Nucor Corporations plants in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Hickman, Arkansas, Decatur, Alabama, and Berkeley, South Carolina; Gallatin Steel Companys plant in Ghent, Kentucky; and North Star Bluescope Steels plant in Delta, Ohio. Our flat rolled products compete as well with companies that convert steel slabs into sheet steel, such as Duferco Steel in Farrell, Pennsylvania.

Our structural steel products compete with various electric arc furnace structural steelmakers, some of which have cost structures and flexible management cultures similar to our own. Notable competitors include Nucor Steel in Berkeley, South Carolina; Nucor-Yamato Steel in Blytheville, Arkansas; Gerdau Ameristeel in Midlothian, Texas and Petersburg, Virginia; and Arcelor Mittal in LaPlace, Louisiana. The Nucor mini-mills and the Gerdau Ameristeel mini-mills, have accounted for the majority of tons produced in North America over the past three years. We also believe, however, that both geography and product choice play significant roles. There are currently no other structural mills located in the Midwest, one of the largest structural steel consuming regions in the United States, and we believe we provide freight-savings and customer service benefits to service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located in the region. We also believe that most of Canadas structural steel consumption is located in Canadas eastern provinces, closer to us than to either of our two largest competitors. Moreover, we provide a broad product mix, focusing on the mid-range and larger section served only by Nucor-Yamato Steel and Gerdau Ameristeel from locations more remote than our facility.

Our major competitors for SBQ products include Republic Engineered Products of Akron, Ohio; The Timken Company of Canton, Ohio; and Gerdau MacSteel in Jackson, Michigan and Monroe, Michigan.

The markets for scrap metals are highly competitive, both in the purchase of raw scrap and the sale of processed scrap. With regard to the purchase of raw scrap, we compete with numerous independent recyclers, as well as smaller scrap companies engaged only in collecting industrial scrap. In many cases we also purchase unprocessed scrap metal from smaller scrap dealers and other processors. Successful procurement of materials is determined primarily by the price offered by the purchaser for the raw scrap and the proximity of our processing facility to the source of the raw scrap. Both ferrous and nonferrous scrap sells as a commodity in both national and international markets, which are affected by relative economic conditions, currency fluctuations and the availability and cost of transportation. Competition for sales of processed scrap is based primarily on the price, quality and location of the scrap metals, as well as the level of service provided in terms of reliability and timing of delivery.

Our main competitors in the joist business are Vulcraft, a division of Nucor Corporation; Canam Group; Quincy Joist Co.; and CMC, a division of Commercial Metals Company. In the steel decking business, New Millenniums main competitors are Vulcraft; Wheeling Corrugating Co., Quincy Joist Co.; and CMC.