Madhu Ranade is a member of the Columbus Rotary Club, but he confessed Tuesday he rarely attends the clubs’ weekly luncheons.
“The last time I was here was in October of 2013 and I had just come to Columbus a few months before for my new job,” Ranade told his fellow Rotarians at Lions Hills Center. “I’m a member, but I don’t get to attend many meetings because of my work.”
Ranade is the vice president and general manager at Steel Dynamics Inc. in Columbus. Like the company he manages, Ranade’s presence is felt if not always seen.
Ranade provided a review of the plant’s operations, including the company’s recently announced plans for an expansion.
Since his arrival in 2013 and a year later, when Russian-owned Severstal was sold to Indiana-based Steel Dynamics, Ranade has overseen major expansions at the plant, including a $100-million expansion in 2016 that added a paint line to diversify the company’s product line and expand its market. In June, the company announced plans for a $240-million expansion, one that will add a third galvanizing line and is expected to be complete this year.
The SDI plant covers 1,400 aces, with 1.8 million square feet under roof. With the additional 40-to-45 jobs the latest expansion will create, the company’s employment in Columbus will increase to just short of 800 people.
The growth of SDI, Ranade said, bucks a trend in the industry and affirms the company’s reputation as an industry leader.
“(SDI) is a growth company, which is unusual in this industry,” Ranade said. “Most steel companies have shrunk. Other plants have gradually shut down. We started with one small plant (in 1996). Today’s Steel Dynamics is the fourth largest steel company in North America.”
Ranade said the company’s stock has tripled in value since 2015.
He attributed that growth to the company’s culture and financial strength noting that SDI finances all of its expansions and acquisitions.
The latest expansion came even as the Trump Administration began its trade war with countries such as Mexico — a key customer for the steel produced in Columbus. Mexico has said it will retaliate with a tariff of its own against U.S.-produced steel, but Ranade said the tariff situation has had no adverse affect on SDI Columbus.
“These tariffs are working out very well for us,” he said. “In fact, it’s been going like gang-busters. The way I talk to people about it is that the U.S. has always had imports of steel. Typically about 25 percent of the steel in the U.S. was imports. But it had gotten out of hand in recent years, as much as 35 to 36 percent. A lot of U.S. companies went bankrupt. Is (the tariff) the best way to do that? We’ll see.”
Ranade said Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs on rolled steel, the Columbus plant’s primary product, will have only a limited effect on the company, thanks to a provision in the tariff.
“So far, it’s interesting that (Mexico’s tariff) has not impacted us,” he said. “We continue to do business with Mexico. One important thing is that when we sell still to Mexican companies, if those products come back and are sold in the U.S., the tariff doesn’t apply. That’s the case with most of the steel we sell there. So it hasn’t affected us.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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