Midwest-based Contractors Steel, a portfolio company of UPG Enterprises LLC, has acquired Los Angeles-based Borrmann Metal Center, a light structural and specialty metal service center. The acquisition expands Contractors Steel’s footprint in the Southwestern United States and Mexico...

Contractors Steel, a division of UPG Enterprises LLC, has hired Jim Gould as the company's newly appointed West region sales manager. In his new role, Gould is responsible for the business development of Contractors Steel’s newest location in Phoenix, scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Chicago-based UPG Enterprises, a strategic operator of metals and logistics companies, will expand Contractors Steel west into Arizona; growing the geographic footprint of both brands. In anticipation, UPG has consolidated the Contractors Steel Livonia, Mich., plant into its Van Buren, Mich., facility.

Reliance Steel & Aluminumís record revenues of $11.5 billion in 2018 keeps it atop the annual survey of North Americaís largest service center companies.

Fifty years in, LexCentral Steel is primed to upgrade its processing. Meanwhile, sister company Union Partners has become a major acquirer in the steel distribution industry.

Union Partners LLC has appointed industry veteran Steve Letnich as the chief operating officer of Contractors Steel. Letnich succeeds Marc Bokas, who has retired after 40 years in the industry.

As it does every year, Metal Center News compiles sales figures for North America’s largest service center companies for their most recently completed fiscal year.

Ralph Hartsoe will retire from Contractors Steel on Friday, Aug. 3. He has been with the Livonia, Mich.-based service center company for the past 34 years.

To date, there have been at least 17 business acquisitions by service center companies, most of them involving the purchase of a smaller distributor. This far outstrips the pace of recent years, when that would have been closer to a full-year figure.

Pent-up demand is often a driver in consumer markets, whether talking about automobiles or homes. It also serves as a tailwind in the industrial marketplace, as businesses look to invest in new transportation equipment and machinery when they emerge from the down cycle.

Union Partners is continuing to build its service center holdings, making one of its largest acquisitions with the purchase of Contractors Steel. The Livonia, Mich.-based service center company maintains more than 100,000 tons of carbon and structural plate, beams, pipe, tube, angles and channels.

Service centers have seen better prices and stronger shipments so far in 2017, but it may take some time for the healthier business conditions to translate into more capital spending.