• Esmark Inc. Acquires Miami Valley Steel
• Reliance to Acquire Chapel Steel
• EMJ to Open 4 New Locations
• Russel Metals Sells Lachine Facility
• ADS Logistics Opens Canadian
  Facility to Serve GM, RSDC
• MAS Industries Opens Plant
  to Serve Navy Shipbuilding
• Obituaries: Evelyn K Richie; John L. West
• Briefs
• People

Esmark Inc. Acquires Miami Valley Steel
Esmark Inc., Chicago, has purchased Piqua, Ohio-based Miami Valley Steel Services Inc. for $81 million in cash, representing its largest acquisition to date.
Miami Valley Steel Services is a flat-rolled steel distributor and value-added processor that ships about 200,000 tons of steel per year. The company posted revenues of $150 million last year and operates a 325,000-square-foot processing plant in Piqua.

“The Miami Valley acquisition enables us to add one of the finest service centers in the United States to our family of companies,” Esmark Chief Executive Officer James P. Bouchard says. Esmark is now one of the United States’ largest flat-roll buyers with annual purchases of 800,000 tons of cold-rolled and coated products.

“The steel industry is in the early phase of addressing the two factors driving instability in the domestic steel market,” Bouchard remarks. These are “the ability to rationalize mill production capacity prior to large build-ups of service center inventories, and the distribution channels associated with non-prime products.”

Brian R. Williamson will remain as president of Miami Valley, responsible for day-to-day-operations. He’ll also join Esmark’s board of directors.
“I’m excited about the future of Miami Valley Steel. Combining forces with Esmark provides our shareholders, managers and employees with advantages they would not have enjoyed as an independent operator in a consolidating industry,” Williamson says.

Reliance to Acquire Chapel Steel
Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., Los Angeles, reached an agreement May 31 to acquire Chapel Steel Corp., Spring House, Pa. The transaction was expected to close within two months, subject to due diligence and regulatory approvals. Terms were not disclosed.

Chapel—which recorded fiscal 2004 net sales of $273 million—was founded in 1972 and is a privately held metals service center company that processes and distributes carbon and alloy steel plate products from five facilities: Houston; Pottstown, Pa.; Bourbonnais, Ill.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Portland, Ore. Chapel also warehouses and distributes its products in Cincinnati and Hamilton, Ontario. The company services industries such as construction, defense, heavy equipment, shipbuilding and energy, among others.

Reliance CEO David H. Hannah calls Chapel “a well-run and growing company that adds to both our product offerings and our geographic coverage across the country. We are very excited about the future potential of this new addition to the Reliance family.”

EMJ to Open 4 New Locations
Earle M. Jorgensen Co., Brea, Calif., a full-service metals distributor specializing in steel bar and tubing, will open a branch in Spokane, Wash., this month. The company’s board of directors has approved funding for three more locations in Hartford, Conn., Lafayette, La., and Quebec City, Quebec, to be completed during fiscal 2006. In addition, expansion projects are planned for existing branches in Kansas City, Mo., and Toronto.

Maurice “Sandy” Nelson Jr., president and CEO, says the company estimates capital expenditures to complete these projects will be about $11.6 million. “We anticipate funding these investments with a combination of internally generated cash and debt.”

On releasing EMJ’s fiscal 2005 financial statements, Nelson says the company has had an historic year that culminated with a merger and financial restructuring, and an initial public offering.

Revenues in the fiscal year ended March 31 increased 54.6 percent to $1.6 billion, from $1.04 billion in fiscal 2004. Net income totaled $97.5 million, compared with a loss of $23.5 million the year before. Annual shipments increased 16 percent from fiscal 2004.

EMJ significantly paid down debt during its March quarter, cutting its revolving credit facility by $74.6 million to a balance of $16.9 million.

Nelson projects some “seasonal revenue slowdown as we approach the summer months, consistent with past history. We estimate the range of revenue for the June 2005 quarter to be $430 to $440 million, [and] EBITDA to be within a range of $42 million to $46 million.”

On April 20, EMJ completed its merger and financial restructuring. EMJ’s parent, Earle M. Jorgensen Holding Co. Inc. was merged with and into a wholly owned subsidiary of EMJ. That day, the company also closed its IPO of 17.6 million shares of EMJ common stock, raising $176 million, the net proceeds of which were used to redeem holding company debt and preferred stock.

Russel Metals Sells Lachine Facility
Russel Metals Inc., Mississauga, Ontario, sold its previously shuttered distribution center in Lachine, Quebec, for $5.7 million.

The Lachine facility was made redundant when Russel acquired Acier Leroux. The sale will result in a one-time gain on the sale of $2.8 million, which will be recorded as part of the restructuring charges in the second quarter. Russel has also sold Armabec, a small rebar operation in Quebec, for $1.5 million in cash with no gain or loss on the sale.

These two divestitures and the sale of Delta Joists in the first quarter were the last major asset disposals associated with the April 2003 acquisition of Acier Leroux, company officials say.

ADS Logistics Opens Canadian Facility
To Serve GM, RSDC
ADS Logistic LLC, Homewood, Ill., which provides integrated logistics services to the metals industry, has signed an agreement with the Regional Steel Distribution Center (RSDC) of Michigan to provide a pin pallet blank handling operation in Oshawa, Ontario, to support General Motors. RSDC, in Holt, Mich., is co-owned by Kasle Steel Corp. and Marubeni Itochu Steel America.

ADS has reconfigured a 52,000-square-foot metals warehouse located near GM’s plant in Oshawa to meet the structural and operational demands of a metals transload operation. This is the company’s fifth specialized transload facility and its first expansion outside the United States.

“This facility represents another step in the continuing evolution of ADS as an international service provider to the metals industry,” says Stephen Fraser, president and chief executive officer.

ADS Logistics is under contract to RSDC of Michigan, a 625,000-square-foot steel processing center that produces the majority of the blanks sent to Oshawa for stamping.

RSDC ships about 35 loads per day to various ADS facilities for the pallet transfer process and found that ADS “truly has the whatever-it-takes approach to daily business,” remarks RSDC’s Dan Combs. “Not only did ADS establish the transloading operations, it also coordinated the truck distribution for this operation.”

Cole Carriers Corp., Hamilton, Ontario, is ADS Logistics’ strategic partner for this endeavor. Cole was instrumental in obtaining and upgrading the facility, and will provide transportation services. Cole has a history of serving primary steel producers, steel processing centers, automotive blankers and Tier I and II manufacturers with just-in-time service.

ADS and its Roll & Hold division operate four other transload facilities specialized in serving the automotive blanking business: in Indianapolis and Marion, Ind., O’Fallon, Mo., and Shreveport, La.

MAS Industries Opens Plant to Serve Navy Shipbuilding
MAS Industries, based in Wallingford, Conn., opened a new 70,000-square-foot facility last month in Metairie, La., to support the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, among other business opportunities.
MAS Industries manufactures and distributes specialty high temperature thermal, acoustic and fire insulation materials to the aviation and shipbuilding industries, and distributes marine-grade aluminum products.

The company won a contract from Marinette Marine, part of the Lockheed Martin LCS team, to provide aluminum panels, high-temperature insulation, and water-jet cutting to the Lockheed Martin team’s first two LCSs, called Flight 0.

The design calls for an aluminum superstructure built on a steel hull. LCS will provide the Navy with a new type of surface combatant for coastal waters.
“Our new facility provides us with the capability to fully support this Navy program, as well as grow our business,” says Newton Reynolds, chairman of MAS Industries.

The facility also supports a nascent partnership between MAS Industries and Friction Stir Link for friction stir joining. This technology allows joining of two pieces of aluminum up to 1.5 inches thick, at various widths and lengths.

Friction Stir Joining uses a mechanical tool to stir the junction of the two pieces, thus making two pieces into one without melting, adding welding wire or any other contaminants. This creates a bond that is as pure and strong as the parent material.

The partnership plans to open additional facilities on the mid-Atlantic and Pacific Northwest coasts in the next two years.

Construction on the first LCS began in early February at Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis. The Lockheed Martin team will deliver the first ship to the U.S. Navy in late 2006. Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, La., will build the second Flight 0 LCS. The Navy will order 22 ships through 2011, with a potential for many more beyond that.

Briefs
Marmon/Keystone Canada Inc. has replaced its eastern Canadian fleet of trailers with an updated combination of 40- 45- and 48-foot-long thruway models to better meet specific customer requirements. Safety features were added to comply with new federal legislation on fall protection and cargo securement. The new vehicles are servicing customers in Ontario and Quebec.

The Material Works, Red Bud, Ill., has installed a Butech Inc. hydraulic roller-leveler on its 72-inch-wide coil-to-coil strip cleaning line. It features a quick-change cassette system for changing roll diameters, which increases the gauge range of the material the leveler can handle. With one cassette, the leveler can process material from 0.10- to 0.25-inch-thick. With the second cassette, the line can level metals from 0.03- to 0.125-inch-thick.

Del Metals, a general line and flat-rolled service center in Toronto, has chosen Invera’s Stratix metals industry enterprise software product to manage its metal price book, shop floor production recording and automated mill test certificate generation.

McNichols Co. won an Outstanding Safety Award from its insurance provider for achieving two consecutive years without a lost-time injury. The company employs 300 people.

Copper & Brass Sales, Southfield, Mich., has ordered a 20-ton, 60-inch-wide double-loop coil slitting line and automatic slit coil packaging line from Braner/Loopco. The system will slit copper, brass, stainless steel and aluminum in gauges from 0.010 through 0.250-inch.

Heidtman Steel Products Inc., Toledo, has purchased a cut-to-length line from Red Bud Industries to be installed at its recently expanded Butler, Ind., plant. The line includes RBI’s heavy-gauge stretcher leveler and heavy-gauge servo hydraulic grip feed system. Material up to 0.312-inch-thick from coils up to 30 tons will be processed using a deep loop, while thicker material will run in a start/stop mode.

Fisher & Ludlow, a producer and distributor of expanded metals and metal gratings, has ordered three overhead cranes with capacities ranging from 5 to 15 tons for its production facility in Burlington, Ontario, from Overhead Crane Ltd., a division of Morris Material Handling.

Coil Steels Group Pty. Ltd., a service center chain based in Granville, Australia, has purchased a Red Bud cut-to-length/blanking line for its slitting plant in Salisbury, Queensland. The system is capable of producing blanks with a part length repeatability of plus or minus 0.127 mm straight from coils up to 18 metric tons.

Stalprokat, a Moscow-based metals distributor, has purchased a second Red Bud cut-to-length/blanking line to serve the close-tolerance, custom-size blanking market. The line will process materials 0.138-inch-thick by 60 inches wide at a width tolerance of plus or minus 0.127 mm from coils up to 25 tons.

People
Larry J. Liebovich retired recently as president of Liebovich Steel & Aluminum, Rockford, Ill., after spending more than 32 years in the metals distribution industry. Liebovich sold his company to Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. in March 1999, but stayed on to manage it. He intends to stay active in the industry, as a consultant or serving on a company board. “My enthusiasm for this industry has not diminished. I have steel in my blood and I’m too young to totally retire,” Liebovich says.

Earle M. Jorgensen Co.’s board of directors has elected Andrew G. Sharkey III to serve as a director and as a member of the Compensation Committee and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. Sharkey is director, president and chief executive officer of the American Iron and Steel Institute, Washington, D.C. Before that, he was president of the Steel Service Center Institute for 12 years.

Thomas M. Brown has been promoted to president of Cincinnati Steel Products Co., a distributor of carbon flat-roll and plate products. He was the company’s vice president and general manager. Brown succeeds James S. Todd, who remains as chairman.

Transtar Metals, Torrance, Calif., made four additions to its senior management team. Jolene Myers was named chief financial officer. She joins Transtar after 15 years as the CFO and chief accounting officer of Paper-Pak Products/LVD Corp. Paul Fielding was named senior vice president of domestic sales. He has 23 years of experience in the aluminum industry with Reynolds Metals, McCook Metals and Pechiney Rolled Products. Chris Ludwig was named vice president of international sales/MRO. He has 15 years of experience specializing in the aerospace mechanical hardware market. Sarah Mans was named vice president of international sales/Asia and Pacific. She has 10 years of experience in the Asia and Pacific markets, selling and marketing avionics, hardware and software systems to the major airlines.

Mark T. Seryak was named chief financial officer of General Steel Corp., Cleveland, which processes and sells steel plate to industrial and heavy equipment manufacturers, and fabricates highway and railroad bridge bearings. Seryak previously owned and operated a multi-branch distributorship of sign supplies. Before that, he spent 21 years in corporate banking.

Steel Technologies Inc. appointed Patrick M. Flanagan as vice president of human resources. He has 20 years of HR experience including as president of a consulting firm, Labor Relations Council, and as a partner in a law firm.

Greer Steel, a producer and distributor of cold-rolled strip steel, promoted Curtis L. Lamar to general manager of its Ferndale, Mich., service center. Lamar, a metallurgist, has been a sales representative for Greer Steel for two years. His experience includes positions as national sales manager, metallurgist and quality manager at Rouge Steel and Cold Metal Products Inc.