Steel Summit 2024: SDI's Barry Schneider keeps the hits rolling

Having trained as an engineer at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., Schneider later found work at LTV Steel. All the while, he moonlighted in a rock band, making the rounds at Cleveland clubs.

After doing a technical startup at LTV Works Cleveland, Schneider discovered, “I’m pretty good at starting things up.”

“So that became what drove me, and drove me to SDI, and right here to the Summit so many years later,” he added.

SDI – more than a steelmaker

Asked to describe SDI as a company, Schneider expanded beyond the company’s roots. He said it’s more of a “materials or metals company” rather than strictly a steelmaker.

“Even though we started out in steel, we always saw the opportunity to bring value to customers through supply chains and resources,” he commented.

He noted that SDI has “quietly” become the largest recycler in North America through its OmniSource platform, with locations in the US, Canada, and Mexico. In the US, it operates 14 shredders, he said.

He also cited its New Millennium subsidiary as a fabrication company that manufactures steel joists and decks, with locations in the US and Mexico.

Additionally, SDI operates an aluminum smelter in Fort Wayne, and those are just a few examples he gave that stretch beyond the traditional steel industry.

Light metal

The company has other big projects in the works, namely Aluminum Dynamics.

“We’re really excited about where the whole project is,” Schneider said. He noted three previously announced components.

“Two of them are going to be slab centers where we melt locally obtained scrap, and we go ahead and purify it, clean it, and then we cast it into a slab,” he said.

He said the slab will then make its way to Columbus, Miss., where SDI is building an aluminum rolling mill.

“So if you go to our website, it’s aluminumdynamicsllc.com, we’ve been posting videos pretty regularly,” he quipped.

SDI has said the rolling facility, with an annual capacity of 600,000 metric tons, is expected to begin operations in mid-2025. A recycled slab center in Arizona will begin production in H2’25, and another in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, will begin production in Q1’25.

Outlook for 2025, Sinton

Looking ahead to next year, Schneider said, “I think we have a lot of great things happening.”

Chief among them, he noted, “I really believe that Sinton really matures into a fully operational plant.”

In April, the company announced that “certain transformer limitations” had been resolved.

Note that the Sinton, Texas, flat-rolled EAF mill has an annual steelmaking capacity of 3 million short tons, according to SMU’s EAF Status Table.

Schneider also said that the four new previously announced process lines “will be absolutely ready for more business.”

Recall that two new lines are at SDI’s Heartland flat-rolled processing mill in Terre Haute. The other two are at Sinton.

“So I see 2025 as a pretty robust year,” commented Schneider. “And I say that from an order standpoint, I’m agnostic as to what the price situation may be, but we’re going to attack it. You know our culture is designed to run full.”

Concluding, Schneider found the through line, whether with a guitar at a club or on the floor of a mill: “You know, you function better with teams of people, whether it’s a band or whether it’s a football team or whether it’s your caster team. They challenge you to be better,” he said.