Moving Metal

Splitting a steel beam into “tees” using a rotary mechanical shear at PDM, before and after images. A water jet cools the heated steel and keeps particulates down.

industries, Aluminum and Stainless gave Reliance access to a new and promising market. Indeed, in March 2001, Aluminum and Stainless opened a New Orleans branch by acquiring the assets of a competitor that was in bankruptcy. By the end of the year revenues had jumped about thirty-five percent. By this time, Reliance had outgrown its corporate office building adjacent to the flagship plant in Vernon, California. In a sense, time had passed the old headquarters by as well. The 1990s boom, and especially the late-decade dot-com bubble, saw the launch of a host of new high-tech enterprises, each of which sought to outdo the other with upscale facilities and perks appealing to new hires. As the new millennium dawned, young professionals began to expect that kind of workplace. Reliance, however, offered not the workplace of tomorrow, but the office of yesterday—a remodeled machine shop, next door to a paper recycler and rendering plant, which left a negative olfactory impression on visitors and prospective employees alike. “We literally had people who

The first such bargain appeared in January 2001. Min- neapolis, Minnesota-based Viking Materials, Inc. was a twenty-four-year-old company specializing in carbon steel flat- rolled products. The company had just grossed $90.1 million, and Allen Applegate, its President, believed that $95 million was attainable in 2001. There were two wrinkles, however. Applegate needed capital to bolster Viking’s aluminum and stainless steel product lines, and to help build up a Chica- go-based affiliate, Viking Materials of Illinois, Inc. “We were growing so rapidly that we leveraged ourselves just about as far as we could go in order to take advantage of opportuni- ties in the Minneapolis market,” Applegate told Metal Center News . Reliance could help on both counts while fortifying its own recently established upper Midwest presence. That same month, Reliance moved deeper into the Southeast by acquiring Aluminum and Stainless, Inc., based in Lafayette, Louisiana. A processor and distributor of aluminum sheet, plate, and bar products to the Gulf Coast oil and gas

130