“It is the most significant investment our family has ever made,” said Nick Demana, Benjamin Steel president, who declined to disclose the purchase price.
The company is a third-generation family-owned business of 75 years that started as a metal and paper scrap business and has 210 employees with facilities in Dayton, Lima and Mansfield. Benjamin Steel actively had been seeking expansion opportunities for several years.
“We’ve been looking for about five years for a major opportunity,” said Demana. “We thought we were going to make a major purchase about three years ago, but it just didn’t fit our plans. We learned about this opportunity one year ago, and low and behold a little earlier this year we made a decision of pursuing it further.
“After several months of due diligence, we felt it was the right move for us and Friday was the day of closing.”
The move creates a company under the name of Frederick Steel, which will deal in carbon steel products.
“That is the name that the business we acquired operated under for a number of years,” said Demana, who added Byer Steel was in the process of rolling the business under the umbrella of its name. “Now that we’ve acquired their structural steel division, we are going to move forward with Frederick, mostly because we believe the marketplace, the customers and the employees currently working for the company have a closer attachment to the Frederick Steel name.”
While the focus will be on incorporating Frederick into the Benjamin business model, Demana didn’t rule out future acquisitions.
“We will not pursue any additional acquisitions in the near future, but growth by acquisition will remain part of our strategy for our future,” he said.
Byer Steel, also a family-owned business, will continue operating its rebar mill, sales and fabrication division as well as its scrap metal recycling operations.
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