SMS auctions Illinois yard, focuses on mill services

Scrap Metal Services (SMS) is selling its Burnham, Illinois, scrap metal recycling facility and associated assets in a sealed bid auction on 4 December as part of its strategy to focus on steel mill services.

SMS began focusing more on mill services after Jeremy Kirchin became chief executive in December 2018.

The Burnham facility sale covers the 30-acre site with rail access, associated buildings and scrap processing equipment, including a baler, shear, car crusher, material handlers, excavators, wheel loaders, tractors, roll-offs, dump trailers, gondolas and flatbed trailers and an uninstalled shredder with support equipment.

SMS already sold its New Carlisle, Indiana, shredder to Omnisource, the scrap subsidiary of steelmaker Steel Dynamics, earlier this year. It sold its Mexico-based scrap operation in November 2019, and most recently completed a full conversion of its Malcolm, Alabama, facility into a tolling operation in October 2020, Kirchin said.

Kirchin told Argus that SMS is not fully exiting the commercial scrap business.

The company's existing East Chicago, Indiana, location will become its new headquarters, and it maintains five scrap facilities across Illinois, Indiana, Texas and Alabama.

Mill services division SMS Mill Services has facilities in Burns Harbor, Indiana; Coatesville, Pennsylvania; Dearborn, Michigan; Mingo Junction, Ohio; and an international division in Belgium.

The company has also deepened its international mill services footprint. ArcelorMittal awarded it a multi-year contract to service one of its long product facilities in Brazil, where SMS began a new 115-person operation this week with more to follow.

By Brad MacAulay