Steel Products

L.B. Foster Sells Steel Piling Products Business to JD Fields

Written by David Schollaert

September 28, 2021

L.B. Foster Company has completed the sale of its piling products division to JD Fields & Co. Inc. for $24 million.

The business unit had $43 million in sales for the first six months of 2021 and $59 million in 2020. The deal, which concluded on Friday, Sept. 24., included inventory plus steel yards in Petersburg, Va., L.B. Foster said.

hand shakeThe Pittsburgh-based rail and infrastructure service provider said that the asset sale would allow it to focus on investment in other parts of the business, namely rail technologies and precast concrete products.

“Our piling products business model was working-capital intensive and presented constraints on our ability to increase profit margins,” L.B. Foster President and CEO John Kasel said. “We are confident that we can redeploy this capital in a way that will achieve better returns and further strengthen businesses in our portfolio that have more robust growth opportunities.”

The opportunity to expand L.B. Foster’s business through rail technologies and precast concrete is “substantial” because those segments have strong growth prospects. The reason: increased demand for environmentally sustainable solutions in transportation and infrastructure, Kasel said.

For JD Fields, a Houston-based steel distributor focused on the energy and civil infrastructure markets, the acquisition increases its scale and market reach, making it an industry leader in steel pipe and piling.

“Our desire is to be as diversified as possible,” JD Fields President and COO Jay Fields told SMU. “This addition doesn’t displace any of our markets or products, it only adds to the breadth of our portfolio.”

By David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com

 

David Schollaert

David Schollaert is a senior analyst for Steel Market Update. David joined SMU after more than a decade in the metals and mining industry in a myriad of different roles. Much of his early experience and expertise were within the coverage and analysis of steel-making raw materials and served previously as senior editor of the CRU Prices Service. Most recently, however, before his return to market analysis, David held roles as a metals buyer and an operations manager for raw material suppliers. Based in CRU’s Pittsburgh office, David can be reached at david@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-720-1008.

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