Still Solid

The problems experienced by ferrous scrap processors in the past two years have mostly been of the sort caused by business conditions that are so good that there is not enough time to pay attention to details.

When Recycling Today last published its list of the nation’s 20 largest ferrous scrap processors in the spring of 2004, the scrap industry was already in the midst of its current boom, with the previous year of 2003 generally considered one that would be tough to match for good news.

But pricing has remained aloft and has surged up even higher, as global demand for ferrous scrap and other steelmaking materials has created a market with very few parallels in the memories of most traders.

The money flowing into the scrap industry has perhaps helped fuel some merger and acquisition activity, but it has also emboldened privately held firms to stay in the market and enjoy the returns.

The vast majority of companies that appeared on the 2004 list appear again on our 2006 version. One major exception involves the merger of Hugo Neu Corp. into Australia’s Sims Group. That company’s combined operations make it an even more powerful competitor for processing market share than either had been before the merger.

Our hope is that owners, managers and employees of the companies that are on the list will consider it an honor. It takes hard work by a lot of people to procure, process and ship ferrous scrap that is needed and wanted by steel mills and foundries. We hope that our recognition of those companies will be viewed as a way to honor leadership in an industry that can provide challenges with each up and down cycle in the market.

Updating the list every two years has proven to be a good way to track changes in the corporate composition of the ferrous scrap industry. Among the major changes in this list compared to the April 2004 version is the previously mentioned combination of Hugo Neu Corp. and Simsmetal into a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Sims Group known as Sims Hugo Neu Co. LLC.

There has also been at least one company that appeared in earlier lists that has since been largely disbanded. The former North Star Recycling subsidiary of Cargill Inc., Minneapolis, was sold off when Cargill decided to de-emphasize its involvement in the steel industry.

Many of North Star’s former locations were picked up by Alter Scrap Processing. The St. Louis-based company added a number of Upper Midwest locations to its roster by acquiring some of the former North Star scrap processing assets.

There remain several companies that are viable candidates for Recycling Today’s list of the 20 largest scrap processors in the United States. In the cases of some of these companies, they have submitted figures that put them just outside of the 20 largest, while in other cases the companies did not submit a tonnage figure, and no reliable estimate could be calculated.

Among such companies are Camden Iron & Metal Inc., Camden, N.J.; Gershow Recycling, Medford, N.Y.; Newell of Atlanta; Morris Recycling, New Albany, Miss.; General Iron Industries, Chicago; American Compressed Steel, Kansas City, Mo.; Atlantic Scrap and Processing, Kernersville, N.C.; Sadoff Iron & Metal Co., Fond du Lac, Wis.; Yaffe Cos. Inc., Muskogee, Okla.; Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co., Holland, Mich.; Adams Steel, Anaheim, Calif., Pacific Coast Recycling, Long Beach, Calif.; and Tennessee Valley Recycling, Decatur, Ala.

The editors of Recycling Today would be happy to amend our list of the 20 largest scrap processors in the United States to include any of these companies that fell into the "non-responding" category for this year’s edition of the chart.

The author is the editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted via e-mail at btaylor@gie.net.