Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. (RS) has completed the transaction to acquire Fry Steel company’s outstanding capital stock, the metals producer announced on Thursday, January 2. RS had signed an agreement to purchase the SantaFe Springs, California, family-owned entity in early December 2019.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed by either company, except an announcement that Steve Fry, chief executive officer, Fry Steel retired after closing the acquisition. Fry Steel’s net sales were at about $100mn at the end of 2019.
Fry Steel fits within RS’ strategy of fulfilling small orders with quick turnaround. The Californian company has a diverse product assortment of 8,000 types of bar metal and owns a proprietary fleet of trucks which fit with RS’s 100,000 metal products to more than 125,000 customers spread throughout the 13 countries it serves.
The majority of Fry’s sites are within 40 US states followed by 15 sites in Canada and 11 in the UK. RS presently has one site in central Mexico. In 2018, RS’s average order size was $2,130 with approximately 49pc including value-added services and 40pc delivered within 24 hours. RS is expected to end 2019 with around $11bn in sales with close to $1bn in operating income.