<article><p class="lead">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.</p><p>SMS began focusing more on mill services after Jeremy Kirchin became chief executive in December 2018. </p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>Kirchin told <i>Argus</i> that SMS is not fully exiting the commercial scrap business. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p class="bylines"><i>By Brad MacAulay</i></p></article>
