Moving Metal

ties. “We had a pretty good product and everybody wanted to talk to me,” he recalled. Koch rose systematically through the ranks and saw a lot at Chapel Steel, but never anything like 2004. “All of a sudden, there was a huge spike in steel prices,” he recalled. “If you had inventory on the ground and you had a mill supply, ’04 changed everybody’s life.” Ironically, that was what worried Koch and some of his col- leagues. As the industry changed it was inevitable for smaller companies to merge or be acquired. This windfall made it all the more likely for the Sutows to decide to capitalize on their investment and either sell or liquidate the business. Koch worried about the prospect of merging with another small company. Nor did he want Chapel Steel to lose its identity and become an anonymous acquisition. These concerns led

By then, Reliance was again ready to build and had already identified a potential acquisition: Chapel Steel of Pennsylvania. Founded in 1972, Chapel Steel was a fam- ily-owned business specializing in carbon steel plate and mostly serving the mining and quarry industries. It had four divisions, located in Birmingham, Alabama; Bourbonnais, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; and Houston, Texas. The company also had warehouses in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Hamilton, Ontario. Jerry Sutow was founder and CEO, and his son Jim was Chapel Steel’s President. Chapel’s Vice President was Philadelphia native Steve Koch. After a stint selling securities out of college Koch took a sales job at Chapel Steel and fell in love with the industry, not least because steel was much more tangible than securi-

At AMI Metals, a metal plate bound for the aerospace industry goes through the router.

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