Relying on Steel
The Times - 6/6/03

"There are three to five indirect jobs for every steel industry jobs. All those people are the ones who buy the cars and the washing machines and they pay taxes. The country can't afford to lose those jobs."
Doug Schrader, part of the Stand Up for Steel Campaign.

Jack Carlson, of Portage, owner of Pyro Industrial Services Inc. and co-owner and vice president of AmBriCo, holds briquettes they make from the waste products of the steelmaking process. Carlson plans to testify about the relationship between his companies and U.S. steelmakers at the U.S. International Trade Council hearings in Washington later this month. (Gregg Gearhart / The Times)

Jack Carlson knows first-hand about the symbiotic affinity between the health of the steel industry and the health of its suppliers and contractors and plans to share his knowledge with U.S. decision-makers.

Carlson, 59, who owns Pyro Industrial Services Inc. and is half owner and vice president of AmBriCo Inc., plans to testify about the relationship at the U.S. International Trade Council hearings in Washington in June 19 when the commissioners will hear testimony on the effects of the Section 201 steel tariffs at the midpoint review of their three-year terms.

Steel suppliers and vendors will testify on the need for the tariffs to continue for their full term to balance the assertions of members of the steel consuming industry which claims the tariffs have raised their costs and made them uncompetitive with foreign manufactures.

The Portage-based companies are directly affected by the strength of the U.S. steel industry. Pyro does refractory work at the mills, installing and replacing the lining of the furnaces. But it also is a contractor for refineries and utilities. AmBriCo, however, has only one source for its business: the steel industry.

The 2-year-old company recovers the waste products of the steelmaking operation -- the dust, sludges, mill scale, spent refractory and other debris -- and makes it into briquettes that are returned to the steelmaking process as part of the materials used in either the basic oxygen furnace used by the integrated steelmakers or the electric arc furnace used by minimills to melt scrap. Carlson calls the process "waste minimization."
By creating the briquettes, dried sludges are put into a solid recoverable form using molasses as a binder. With the iron content typically comprising 50 percent of the sludge, using the briquettes as a replacement material can save $45 to $100 per ton of raw material depending on their costs, according to Carlson.

But the real benefit in forming briquettes from the waste materials is the elimination of the landfill costs and in the reduction of environmental hazards, Carlson said. In Arkansas, the location of AmBriCo's largest customers, Nucor Corp., regulations prohibit dumping steel waste products in the state. Instead, the waste materials must be transported to a dump in central Illinois.

"It's not essential to steelmaking," Carlson said. "The steelmaking industry is in such desperate straits right now that the orders have come down to save. The prices are so deflated that we can't do anything, no matter how good we think it is, unless its absolutely essential to steelmaking. Nucor waste is being kept off-site. Our equipment is down there, our people are down there, but they're not working."

"Short-term economics are driving the business right now," he said.
Carlson intends to tell his story to the ITC.

"We're part of the equation just like the steel consumers," said Doug Schrader, who is working with Carlson as part of the industry's Stand Up for Steel campaign. "There are three to five indirect jobs for every steel industry jobs. All those people are the ones who buy the cars and the washing machines and they pay taxes. The country can't afford to lose those jobs."

BY ANDREA HOLECEK
Times Business WriterADVERTISEMENT