Final Thoughts

Steel Market Update is no longer my lone voice and we continue to look for those writers who have something to add which will assist our readers and their knowledge of the market. We hope to add another contributing writer with a tremendous amount of experience in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

As we get ready to move into our 9th year I want to reflect briefly on some of the highlights Steel Market Update went through during the course of 2013.

Early in 2013 Peter Wright joined Steel Market Update as a main contributor of analytical data and articles. Peter developed our Key Market Indicators, worked on developing our imports by product, port and country, Construction Put in Place (CPIP) and many other economic or steel related analysis. Peter is also a metallurgist, long products expert, economic analyst and an instructor for our Steel 101: Introduction to Steelmaking & Market Fundamentals workshop (next one is in Mobile on Feb. 4 & 5, 2014).

Sophia Fain, who worked with us for a couple of years, left us in March 2013. Sophia has her own company designing and selling workout clothing for women and she is a personal trainer. She also became a mom for the first time. We continue to wish her well in all of her endeavors.

Joining us in April 2013 was John Temples who previously was with Pacesetter Steel Service, Inc. in Kennesaw, Georgia. John was the head of training at PSSI and he has been instrumental in expanding our training workshops as well as assisting in getting our new website online. Going forward, John will continue to be a key part of our e-Learning programs, workshops, webinars and conferences. He will also be actively involved in our sales and marketing functions.

Also joining SMU in August of this year was my son, Ryan Packard. Ryan has been involved in a number of special projects. Going forward he will be assisting in the sales and marketing of our products and will be the focal point on our advertising effort for our newsletter and website.

In December 2013 our first employee (from outside of the family), Brett Linton – who joined us as a sophomore at North Georgia College & State University – graduated with a business degree. He also managed to get married just prior to graduation. Brett going forward will be a full time employee. Brett handles all the graphics that you see in our newsletter and website, keeps track of all of the data and is intimately involved in building new content for our new website. He also writes a number of articles for the newsletter.

Sandy Williams is in her second year as a writer/reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. She is the one who has been correcting my grammatical stumbles and spelling missteps. Sandy has been a welcome addition from her first day and we look for her to expand her knowledge and develop new content for us in the future.

Mario Briccetti joined us in the Fall 2013 as a contributing writer. He has been adding content to our Steel Buyers Basics segment which was revived after a couple of years hiatus.

Diana Packard continues to handle the financial side of the business – and she is the “go to” person when you need to renew, add new people, inquire about upgrading your account, etc. Diana has been with the company since the beginning (she had no choice). I am allowed to be the president/publisher of SMU as long as she says I can….

We also have a number of other contributing writers who do excellent jobs in their particular area of expertise: Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk, LLC writes about the HRC and BUS Futures markets. Andre is also our instructor for our Managing Price Risk workshop. Sharing the task of covering the Futures markets is Bradley Clark of Kataman Metals. On occasion Paul Lowrey of Steel Research Associates provides us a peek at the industry from a different perspective. Peter Brebach of Iron Angels of Colorado does the same. On the west coast we have Damon Sun of Diado International who keeps us up to date on the Asian scrap markets.

We also have a large number of “sources” who prefer not to be named. They are spread around the country (and into Asia) and cover a wide variety of topics from scrap to steel pricing, economic issues and analysis, company specific issues and market segment issues and much more. I want to thank each of them for their support during this past year.

We continue to develop workshops and new programs – that will be part of the SMU story for 2014. However, this year we continued to have great instructors for our Steel 101 workshop.  Already mentioned are Peter Wright and John Temples but, we also have John Eckstein (metallurgist and operations specialist) and Steve Painter (mill sales specialist) whose competence and wit have helped inspire a new generation of steel people.

The biggest accomplishment during 2013 was bringing up our new website. This was no easy task for a small company like SMU. The project has taken more than two years from development to launch and it will be a number of years before I consider it complete. If you have not yet taken the time to log into the website and look around we encourage you to do so. If you need help with your login information or navigation to a specific area please let us know and we will assist you with the process (info@SteelMarketUpdate.com).

The stories for 2014 have yet to be written. From a Steel Market Update perspective, our company story will continue to expand as we tap into the talents surrounding us, add new talent to the mix and learn how to use the new tools which exist within our new website. For those of you who have been asking – yes, we do plan on bringing back our Steel Summit in the early Fall 2014.

I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of our members for their patience, support and kind words as the past year progressed. I know I have said it many times but never enough – your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

We will return to our normal publication schedule on Thursday of this week. Our next SMU steel market survey will begin next Monday. Our office is open on Monday, December 30th and Tuesday morning, December 31st. We will be closed on Tuesday afternoon and all day on Wednesday (New Year’s Day). We will not push our next edition of SMU until Thursday. However, some of you have probably already figured out that we are pushing articles to the front of our website for our members to enjoy at their leisure.

Please recommend us to your friends in the industry.

Have a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

John Packard, Publisher