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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: DAVE STICKLER OF BIG RIVER STEEL
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INTRO
1
Big River Steel, based in Osceola, Arkansas, USA, is approaching the end of its first year in operation. The plant is positioned to produce the next generation of steels, be they advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) or electrical steels that were previously only produced by integrated plants. In short, it’s the most progressive and state-of-the-art steel minimill in the world, thanks in large part to its Flex Mill, which was designed, built and supplied by SMS group of Germany in conjunction with BRS. Dave Stickler, CEO of Big River Steel, agreed to be interviewed by Steel Times International, so I flew to Memphis and then drove across the Tennessee state line into Arkansas and then north to Osceola. It was always going to be an interesting encounter as Big River Steel is currently the talk of the town (and the wider world) in a big country where electric steelmaking is the dominant force (accounting for 69% of all US steel production). “There are people in this world who say that for the highest quality steel you have to start with material that comes from the mines of Brazil. I don’t believe that, SMS don’t believe that, the technical people we’ve attracted here don’t believe that and I guess time will tell, but if you look at the track record of people doubting what scrap-based minimills are able to accomplish, their track record is not very good,” Dave Stickler told me. Big River Steel was designed with a clean sheet of paper to produce steels that had never before been produced by a minimill, prompting some industry observers to wonder, “Is this the beginning of the end for integrated mills?” Stickler told me: “I don’t know if it’s smoke and mirrors, but if you’ve seen your market share go from 100% of the domestic flat-rolled steel industry to 45% every time new capacity comes on line, then you’re going to have to fight that much harder to keep your existing position in the market. At the end of the day, the most efficient, nimble, quality suppliers are going to thrive and survive.” Today, less than 45%, but what about tomorrow? Stickler believes it will be less than 35% in five years. These are interesting times for the North American steel industry. I hope you enjoy this exclusive interview with Dave Stickler, the electric warrior, the metal guru, the ‘new kid on the block of EAF steelmaking and, arguably, the David to the integrated mills’ Goliath. Matthew Moggridge, editor, Steel Times International
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
Rolling on the river Some of the most sophisticated investors in the world provided US$1.6 billion of financing to help Dave Stickler realise a dream. In August this year a further US$1.2 billion was raised, proving to Big River Steel’s CEO that the smart money doesn’t believe in statements like ‘there’s too much steel making capacity and you can’t make money investing in the steel industry’. Equipped with a Flex Mill supplied by SMS group of Germany, the new kid on the block, now 12 months in operation, is set to prove that EAF steelmakers can produce any kind of steel currently thought of as solely the domain of integrated mills. Matthew Moggridge* flew to Memphis and drove to Osceola, Arkansas, to meet the man behind the world’s first ‘learning mill’.
“We’re a technology company
that just happens to make steel.” Dave Stickler
* Editor, Steel Times International
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
DRIVE out of Memphis on Interstate 40, cross the Mississippi on the Hernando de Soto Bridge. Half way across the river you’ll hit the state line with Arkansas. Head north on 55 and then take Highway 61, ‘the main thoroughfare of the country blues’ according to Bob Dylan who, in 1965, released his sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. An hour later you’ll be in Osceola, a town of 5,000 people in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions of the United States. The automation of farming and cotton and the moving offshore of clothing production in the region have been bad news for Delta communities, but times they are a-changing. One year ago a gas station minimart in Osceola was selling 3,000 pizza slices annually. Twelve months on and business has tripled to 9,000. Restaurants are opening in town, new housing has appeared. Things are looking up and it’s nothing to do with an alien life force. The change in fortunes for Osceola and surrounding small town communities like Blytheville, Jonesboro and Marion, has a lot to do with the arrival of Big River Steel, so named because it is located close to the banks of the mighty Mississippi river. The company chose Arkansas because of its extensive transportation network embracing highway, river and rail, and an extremely favourable electricity contract. New kid on the block Big River Steel is the new kid on the block and it’s making plenty of ripples in the marketplace mainly because, as an EAF minimill – an electric steel maker – it encroaches even further than other EAF minimills on territory traditionally reserved for integrated steel plants. “If you look back in history, 30 years ago 100% of the flat-rolled steel in the world was produced by the integrated steel community,” said a casually dressed Dave Stickler, CEO of Big River Steel. “Coming out of a caster, eight to 12 inches thick, often times letting the slab cool down then reheating that slab and then working it down to the thinness of the side of a refrigerator,” he said. “In the late 1980s a small steel producing company called Nucor Corporation announced to the world, working with SMS Group out of Germany, that they were going to produce flat-rolled steel using scrap metal instead of iron ore and coking November/December 2017
coal, and that instead of coming out of the caster eight inches thick, we’re going to come out two inches thick,” Stickler continued. The big integrated plants of the time, many of whom are no longer with us, refused to believe that an electric steelmaker using scrap metal was capable of making anything more than garbage cans, but they were to be proved wrong. “It wasn’t too long before they started producing motor lamination steels and continued to move up the quality chain,” Stickler explained, adding that when he was involved with Steel Dynamics 20 years ago, the company was selling deep drawing quality steel to Chrysler. According to Stickler, over the past 30 years minimills have chipped away ‘at the quality parameters that the integrated community repeatedly have said the
Big River Steel finished hot rolled coils
minimills can never make’ and they continue to encroach upon ‘integrated’ territory; so much so that today, 67% of steelmaking in the USA is via the electric arc furnace and is regarded as the safest, most efficient and sustainable way to make steel. But even the electric steelmaking process evolves and with Big River Steel we are seeing the latest evolution of that process. Stickler believes that he has taken the best of both the EAF and integrated worlds. He says that the company’s cost structure is ‘right on top’ of his minimill competitors and that 70% of those costs can be attributed to scrap metal, electricity and labour. For scrap, Big River Steel goes to market every month, like everybody else. “So long as you’re buying ‘at market’ and not
overpaying, your cost is going to be the same as your minimill competitors,” he said. For electricity, Stickler says that the most recently built mill has the best electrical rate and the best electrical consumption per tonne of steel produced. “And there’s a couple of reasons for that; when you site one of these mills, it’s a highly competitive site selection process and you have one state playing against another, multiple utilities vying for your business, so during the the first duration contract period you’re going to have a rate that is likely the best in the industry because it’s been competitively negotiated,” he explained. “After that first duration of the contract you lose your negotiating leverage so you’re going to get an uptick. At Big River our initial contract is 11 years, but then you have to look at the fact that, over the years, industrial America has become much more energy-efficient. A perfect example is our motors and drives. Just like your car when you pull up at a stop sign, the motor stops; our motors and drives don’t stop, but they idle way, way down. Some of the minimills we’re competing with are 20-30 years old. Those motors and drives spin 24/7 and the only time they stop is when they’re down for maintenance,” Stickler said. Big River has kept its labour costs down due to the use of technology. Stickler believes that the company’s labour efficiency is ‘probably slightly above’ its competitors. “But let’s just call it even,” he adds. “On the product capability side what I look to is the fact that Big River was designed specifically with a clean piece of paper to produce steels that, prior to Big River, had never been produced by a minimill; that includes the full compliment of motor lamination grade steel, very, very efficiently,” said Stickler. And this puts Big River in a unique position. “Product that is one inch thick and 78 inches wide will allow us, with some future investments, to get into the fully processed, grain-oriented steels. We have complete product guarantees from our equipment vendors that are backed by letters of credit and refund bonds, so people put their money where their mouth is,” he said, adding that, most importantly, Big River has managed to attract quality talent, people that have left long careers at some of the highest quality integrated steel mills in the world to join what Stickler admits is ‘the upstart Big River Steel’. www.steeltimesint.com
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
Big River Steel’s caster in action
“What really tells me we’re on to something is that people are voting with their feet,” said Stickler, referring to those who had jumped ship from the big integrated plants. Trump, trade and tariffs Stickler is all about getting on with the job with as little fuss as possible, so when it comes to issues like trade and tariffs, he wants no-nonsense decision making, not shilly-shallying. “It wasn’t too long ago that some of our domestic competitors were in the paper every other week saying ‘we’re going to go out of business and go bankrupt unless the Chinese cut their production’.” Stickler maintains a house in China and claims that there would be social unrest if China was forced to shut down half of its steel mills. “What are you going to do with all those workers? Remember, a Chinese mill doesn’t have 450 workers like we do, some of them have over 100,000. You can’t have those people out on the streets, right?” Big River believes in fair trade. “We have to stand on our own two feet whether tariffs and quotas are in place or not. If they are, we benefit; if they’re not we’ve got to be able to compete, that’s how we originally raised our US$1.6 billion in financing,” he said. Stickler’s view on Section 232 is simple: “Whatever the administration’s going to do, all I ask is that they hurry up and do it. Either it’s implemented or not implemented because uncertainty is not good for anyone, not the steel producers, not the buyers to the steel industry or the consumers of steel. November/December 2017
All I ask is that they make their decision and everybody lives with that decision whatever it is,” he asserted. “We have a job to do, which is to continue to operate safely, to create good, high-paying jobs in the local community, produce steel that our customers are interested in buying from us and doing all of that profitably, that’s our job,” said Stickler, adding that he believes Big River has the tool that allows the company to compete no matter what market dynamics are in play. Introducing the ‘Flex Mill’ The tool in question is the Flex Mill, developed in conjunction with SMS Group, and, effectively, the latest evolution of
electric steelmaking. It means that with the cost structure and footprint of a minimill and the product capabilities of an integrated steel plant, Stickler believes he has ‘the fortress to withstand all market conditions’. “We can flex and hopefully be able to compete competitively with the minimills on the products that they’ve historically produced, yet flex the other way and compete, certainly with a lower cost structure, but with the same quality that the integrated mills have traditionally produced,” beamed Stickler, pleased without a doubt that the term ‘flex mill’ is not just a product but a new process of electric steelmaking, another rung on the evolutionary ladder of the process. Big River Steel has trademarked the term ‘Flex Mill’ and Stickler asserts that the company has the flexibility to move from market-to-market depending on market conditions. “If automotive falls from 17 million vehicle builds per year to 14 million, that’s not going to have a dramatic impact on us, unlike some of our integrated competitors that are very heavily focused on automotive. We can pivot to the energy sector or the construction industry,” said Dave. “Our company, with further investment, is well-positioned to service the electric vehicle market, not only the cars themselves, but the charging stations. Think of it: you’ve got to build an entire network, not of gas stations but of charging stations. Those electrical chargers, depending on their design, chew up a lot of steel,” he said.
Steel strip entering the hot mill in Osceola
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8
PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
When phase two is ready, Big River Steel’s capacity will be 3.2Mt/yr
Advanced high strength steels The big prize, of course, is to be a fully fledged supplier of advanced high strength steel (AHSS) to the automotive industry. Big River Steel is selling steel to the automotive industry, but not directly. “Steel is produced right here in Osceola, Arkansas, and some of our first 12 months of steel production is in cars that are on the road today,” he said, referencing Ford, Toyota and Chrysler. “To be fair, those aren’t high strength steels where you have to go through the certification process, they’re for less critical components, but then again, I’m very proud that in the first 12 months our steels are already driving around the United States.” Stickler said that Big River Steel was designed to produce AHSS and already has the necessary talent on board that is knowledgable on the subject. Furthermore, the buyers of AHSS have shown a willingness to work with Big River
Steel, which is the only steel producer to become a member of the Centre for Collision Safety & Analysis (CCSA) at Georg Mason University, a government-funded organisation based outside of Washington DC where cars can be crash-tested using advanced computer simulation technology. “We’re a member of that organisation and the factor there is tolerances. A particular steel grade from a specific mill has a tolerance range from X to Y and the automakers need to design to the lowest common denominator. If you narrow that tolerance range the automaker is going to have much lighter steel. If the tolerance range is wide they’re going to have heavier steel,” Stickler explained, adding that Big River Steel is in a very good position to be able to tighten up those tolerances, and, therefore, take weight out of the car. There were a number of reasons why
Big River Steel joined the CCSA, one being the company’s embracement of machine learning and artificial intelligence, another being its willingness to challenge industry norms, but also, says Stickler, a mutual understanding between the technical brains at Big River Steel and the CCSA with respect to tightening up the aforementioned tolerances. Technology’s role Technology has played a major role in the development of the Big River Steel project. Stickler has famously said that when he first started in the steel industry it was 80% brawn and 20% brains, whereas today at Big River it’s 90% brains and 10% brawn. He also said (at AISTech in Nashville earlier this year) that the ‘status quo steel industry is not known for innovation’ and while that could be taken two ways, Stickler meant that the steel industry is not often recognised for technological achievement. “If you go into a university or a degree programme and talk to engineers or people on the cutting edge of technology, the first thought of theirs is not the steel industry,” he said. “We’re out to try and change that by showing the world that there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for technology evolution in the steel industry,” he said, leading nicely on to another well known Dave Stickler quote: “We’re a technology company that just happens to make steel.” Big River Steel was designed and built in conjunction with SMS group of Germany. “We went to SMS and said we’re interested in producing these particular products and we asked them: do you now have the
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
capability to produce them? The answer was ‘two thirds of it, yes’ and the other third was ‘let’s work together and see if we can’. With regard to machine learning and artificial intelligence, we knew that the technology evolution had advanced significantly so we really put a concerted effort into making sure that we had the capability from A to Z on this mill to collect the data,” explained Stickler. Stickler and his team were confident about data analytics, but acknowledged that the company wasn’t there yet. “We have the talent, we have the interest and we have the drive to get significantly better at analysing that data,” he said, adding that an age-old problem in steelmaking – that of longitudinal cracks appearing on product leaving the caster – was a still an issue but that with more data coming through the system and being analysed, it will be possible to further reduce longitudinal cracks. The importance of Industry 4.0 Stickler adheres strongly to the view that Industry 4.0 – or ‘smart manufacturing’ – is important for the entire steel industry. “My goal is to help people have the perception that the steel industry in the United States is at the forefront of the next generation of the industrial world. We have the luxury of having started with a clean piece of paper,” he said, stressing that Big River Steel’s capabilities with regard to machine learning are high because of the huge amount of data the company has be able to accumulate over its nine months of operation. “More than probably any other steel company in the world,” he added. “I tell our team I want to know as much about the steel mill’s operation as GE [General Electric] and Rolls Royce know about those engines that are flying up
in the sky,” he said, stressing the need to ‘monitor, monitor, monitor’ and the importance of predictive maintenance. “We call ourselves a ‘learning mill’– the more we run, the more this mill is going to learn, just like the autonomous vehicles. I just heard the other day that we’ve already analysed and collected over 100 million data points, that’s everything from temperature, vibration, pressure; we look for correlations in everything we do,” Stickler said.
Big River Steel’s electric arc furnace in action
“We want to find the patterns, the trends, the predictors that say okay, you’re now going from a zero % probability of a break-out to a 40% probability of a breakout to a 70% probability of a break-out to ‘hello Mister Operator, 90% probability, you’d better do something’,” he said, adding that, ultimately, the operator won’t have to do anything as the mill will then
Coil awaiting shipping to customers
self-correct. “We’re not there yet, but we have the infrastructure and the tools, we have a path to get there. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be a challenge, but we’re up for that challenge.” The end of integrated mills? It all begs the question: has the integrated mill in the USA had its day? Less than 45% of flat-rolled steel is produced by integrated mills and in 10 years it will probably be less than 35%, says Stickler. “If you look at the historical trend one would question what the survivability of the integrated steel community in the United States is; I’m not bold enough to say they will go away completely, but they certainly have lost a significant amount of market share over the last 30 years and a significant portion of that over the last 10 to 15 years,” he said. Stickler and his team are busy ramping up the mill. It’s been operating for 12 months, expanded its customer base and has gone from seven customers in month one to 120 currently. “The thing I always look at is the number of repeat customers because if people are repeatedly buying from you, you must be doing something right. If we had a low retention rate I’d be extremely nervous, but fortunately that’s not the case,” he said. The plan is to double plant capacity and up the workforce by 200 to produce 3.2Mt/ yr with a total of 600 workers. “The State of Arkansas says that if we announce an expansion prior to June 2018 there are certain benefits we would receive, but no decision has been made. We have the environmental permits to double the capacity, and we have spent money already on foundations, piping and ductwork,” he said. �
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
“We are a lifecycle partner” Big River Steel in Osceola, Arkansas, USA, is the most progressive and state-of-the-art steel mill in the world. It has been in operation for almost 12 months and is proving to be a great success. We asked Harald Rackel* of SMS group for his view on the project 1. When did SMS group first hear about the plan to build Big River Steel in Osceola, Arkansas? We have been in discussion with the spiritual founder John Correnti for several years to repeat the success of his investment in Mississippi that is now a part of SDI. The actual discussion from start to finish including the equity and site search probably took around two years.
to provide the best proven technology in an ideal mix – or at least always have a fall back position where things were a little more revolutionary.
2. Was there a competitive tender for the Big River Steel contract and if so why do you think the contract was awarded to SMS group? This is a prime example of a joint development effort and was not tendered as such.
7. They say ‘great minds think alike’ – to what extent did SMS group share the Big River Steel vision and how much ‘creative freedom’ did you get? This was a team effort from day one. We sat together several times in the course of the project inception to play devil’s advocate to each other to come up with where we are today.
3. How did the project progress, were there any major stumbling blocks along the way and did everything finish on time and on budget? BRS needs to answer this one as we have no insight into their budget and they were responsible for the erection. 4. Bearing in mind that Big River Steel was a greenfield project, what kind of scope/freedom did this give to SMS group in terms of plant design and equipment? There was no real heritage to consider so all we could think about was what is the best way to do what we need to do. That is obviously an advantage. In the end, though, available capital, markets, environmental standards and people’s experience also have to be considered. This had to be evolutionary and not so much revolutionary as the capital providers and lenders were looking for proven technology. So we had
6. Big River Steel’s CEO Dave Stickler likes to refer to BRS as “a technology company that happens to make steel” – what do you think he means by this statement? To us that is reflective of the attitude Big River has within its team. They do not want to be just another steel maker, but somebody who focusses on using technology to improve what they can bring to the market – and that happens to be the steel industry. Steel is not just big, old and dirty but can actually be quite sexy once you look at it from a technology angle and are willing to think openly.
5. Could such a plant at Big River Steel be retro-fitted onto an existing plant? A plant like Big River Steel can be built anywhere where someone is willing to start thinking from the market he wants to serve and then find the ideal set up with regard to infrastructure and supplies to do this. Retrofitting it into an existing plant is technologically possible, whether it creates the same success story depends mainly on the above.
8. Did the Big River Steel project – more so than any other steel project – give SMS group the opportunity to explore the endless possibilities of high-tech manufacturing and SMS’ strengths in the world of digitalisation and Industry 4.0? BRS has granted SMS full access to the data produced in the plant. This has contributed to a wide range of activities revolutionising economic steel production based on the use of digitalisation and AI.
* Member of the Managing Board of SMS group. November/December 2017
www.steeltimesint.com
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PROFILE: BIG RIVER STEEL
9. Dave Stickler has referred to Big River Steel as being the world’s first ‘learning’ mill – what does he mean by this? BRS and SMS will use the collected data of the facility to constantly increase, with the means of digitalisation, the throughput, availability and the quality of the products. This is the result of linking independent planning circles of production planning, maintenance planning and quality surveillance together. November/December 2017
10. From SMS group’s perspective, what were the key challenges involved in the development of the Big River Steel plant in Osceola? One of the largest obstacles in creating Big River Steel was finding the capital. Dave and his team together with our financing group and our sales team did a great job of marketing this to the investment and banking community. You have to realise that steel is not your typical start up environment today.
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