Schnitzer Steel Industries
Encyclopedia
Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc. is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 manufacturing company headquartered in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

. Founded in 1906, the company deals mainly in recycled steel. In 2004, the company was ranked fourth in The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...

Northwest 100 list of public companies. As of 2006, it was the tenth largest public company in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

 by market capitalization. In 2007, Schnitzer ranked 901st on the Fortune 1000
Fortune 1000
Fortune 1000 is a reference to a list maintained by the American business magazine Fortune. The list is of the 1000 largest American companies, ranked on revenues alone...

 list of the largest companies in the United States with annual revenues of $1.85 billion.

History

Founded in 1906 by Sam Schnitzer, the company started as a one-person scrap metal
Scrap Metal
Scrap Metal were a band from Broome, Western Australia who played rock music with elements of country and reggae. The members had Aboriginal, Irish, Filipino, French, Chinese, Scottish, Indonesian and Japanese heritage. The band toured nationally as part of the Bran Nue Dae musical and with...

 recycler. In 1946, the company incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...

. The company went public in 1993 in an Initial Public Offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...

 (IPO) of $18 per share for 2,750,000 shares.

In 2005, Schnitzer Steel acquired GreenLeaf Auto Recyclers, LLC and Regional Recycling LLC. The company purchased Max Cohen and Sons, a metals recycler based in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, in December 2006. By the end of 2006 Schnitzer operated 28 facilities in 11 states, and by December 2007 increased the number of facilities to 34. That month the Securities and Exchange Commission levied charges against former chairman and CEO Robert Philip for allegedly violating bribery laws as part of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is a United States federal law known primarily for two of its main provisions, one that addresses accounting transparency requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and another concerning bribery of foreign officials.- Provisions and scope...

 in relation to dealings with Chinese steel mills. In 2008, Tamara Lundgren became the chief executive officer with John Carter leaving that position to become the chairman of the board. The Schnitzer family had maintained control of the corporation through supermajority
Supermajority
A supermajority or a qualified majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level or type of support which exceeds a simple majority . In some jurisdictions, for example, parliamentary procedure requires that any action that may alter the rights of the minority has a supermajority...

 voting rights until January 2010, when family members had sold off stock and dropped their stake in the company to less than 20 percent.

Operations

The company’s primary activities are collecting, processing and recycling scrap metal (ferrous
Ferrous
Ferrous , in chemistry, indicates a divalent iron compound , as opposed to ferric, which indicates a trivalent iron compound ....

 and nonferrous metal) and producing finished steel products such as rebar and wire rod from the recycled materials. With operations in both the U.S. and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Schnitzer's activities are divided into three operating groups: Metals Recycling, Steel Manufacturing, and Auto Parts.
The Metals Recycling unit purchases scrap metal and processes that metal for sale to other domestic and international steel makers. The Auto Parts division buys salvaged vehicles to scrap for parts at its auto parts retailers, and then recycles any remaining portions of the vehicles to recyclers. The Steel Manufacturing group makes finished products such as merchant wire, rebar
Rebar
A rebar , also known as reinforcing steel, reinforcement steel, rerod, or a deformed bar, is a common steel bar, and is commonly used as a tensioning device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures holding the concrete in compression...

, and coiled rebar, as well as other specialty products.

External links

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