Metal Monday October 25, 2021 with Nick Snyder and Brett Ekart.
Play the youtube video and follow along with the text below.
Nick Snyder:
All right. Welcome everybody. We're here for special metal Monday. We got a special guest [Brad Rudover 00:00:14] up from, well introduce yourself to everybody, Brad.
Brad Rudover:
Hey, thank you for and me on here, Nick and Brett, it's always a pleasure hanging out with you guys. It's just fun. Yeah so scrap university is what we're talking about, just a little segment today. And so I really wanted to thank you guys for having me on so we can let the world know what's happened and with Scrap U.
Brett Ekart:
So the only guy I know that has a company called Detroit Scrap, who lives in Canada.
Nick Snyder:
That threw me off for a while.
Brett Ekart:
Why don't you just call your a company fucking Canada Scrap?
Brad Rudover:
You know dude, I'll tell you. Detroit's just such a dangerous city in Canada is so safe man. Like we just leave our doors wide open here and like no one even comes. It's great.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. That's kind of how it's in Idaho still, but we'll see if that changes any time soon. So let's get it. Nick let's go into the scrap this morning.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah, we saw copper kind of cool off last week, it was going crazy. It looked like, shoot. It looked like we might get to five bucks within this month. You know? It kind of cooled off, but a little bit of a run today on copper. I mean, and everything else is looking strong too. We're already almost, a week from today, we're going to already be in November. So it's kind of time to start talking about the [ferrous markets 00:01:47], where they're going to head. And Brad, what do you think, where do you think ferrous is going to be here in a week?
Brad Rudover:
I'm hearing up 20 on the ferrous.
Brett Ekart:
You're light, you're light.
Brad Rudover:
Well, hey man I don't want to get you excited like you do Brett. You're like up a hundred! I'm just like.
Brett Ekart:
Well no, no. But you're light. Just so you know, I think it's going to be, November's going to be a good month if you're in the ferrous business.
Nick Snyder:
So minimum we're hoping up 20, well maybe up 40.
Brad Rudover:
I mean historically this time of year is when everything starts slowing down and margins are widening. And it's funny is like, I get [Argus Media 00:02:31] from Jennifer right. And of course Nucor, I know Brett, you love Nucor.
Brett Ekart:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Brad Rudover:
You know, record profits. It's like.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. And I'm just trying to keep the lights on over here. I mean shoot, So I can keep my internet bill fed. So I can at least post some scrap sales every once in a while on the internet. So I don't even know. I mean I don't even know how it is to make record profits. But I'm just hoping to get some of that action in November.
Nick Snyder:
Well, so hopefully we close the year off strong November, December. I'm hoping just for nice run, just be real nice.
Brett Ekart:
Coppers what? 460, around 460 this morning.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah.
Brett Ekart:
Nickles up big. Nine and a quarter.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah.
Brett Ekart:
Lead and zinc are running hard again. I know.
Nick Snyder:
Aluminum.
Brett Ekart:
PGMs look pretty strong this morning. Aluminum. Aluminum kind of hit the skids last week, but it's at least showing some green this morning.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah.
Brett Ekart:
Maybe trying to level out. But in general it feels like everything is fairly positive on a base metal side, PGM side going into November. So that's a good sign.
Brad Rudover:
Now. Why do you guys think that the markets are doing what they're doing when we're in kind of like the middle, maybe tail end of this pandemic? Is this the M word? Is this manipulation by investors or is this actual demand?
Brett Ekart:
I think it's supply. Supply and demand. I think the reason the ferrous markets are going to see a big jump in November is the supply chain is still pretty screwed up. So you've got some pretty good demand coming from overseas, which is what's going to keep the domestic mills, honest this month. That export market's heating up and you know the export market as well as anybody. So I don't have to explain that to you. And I don't spend as much time on the ferrous export side, but those markets are heating up. And the demand for new steel is still there. So that's going to maybe tighten up the margin on the scrap, well there's a historical margin between scrap and new steel right now. So either something's going to give, right, the price of new steel is going to come down or the price of scraps going to come up and tighten that margin.
Brett Ekart:
So I think it's a combination of a lot of factors. Your big ferrous yards are seeing a slow down in supply, but the demand's still good on the back end. They're not getting the material that they would anticipate with these kind of pricing. And so I think that it kind of accumulation of factors on the ferrous side and on the non-ferrous side, you're seeing the reports on like the [COMAX 00:05:29] warehouse. And if the copper's not there and there's demand for it, at some point, something's going to give right. And I think that's what's we're seeing right now.
Brad Rudover:
And so I think that's a good explanation. Now, do you think that's probably due to construction projects for the steel side of things, like where the demand is coming from?
Brett Ekart:
On the ferrous side, on the steel side? I think it's, yeah. There's still a lot of pent up demand for new steel. Even for us, we ordered steel buildings for some of our storage unit projects that we're supposed to be here in July and they're still not here. Right.
Brad Rudover:
Wow.
Brett Ekart:
We're just getting them. And we're ordering more and we know our timelines are getting pushed out farther. So I think you're seeing that people are worried that they're not going to be able to get X, Y, Z material, so they're even buying forward. So they're kind of even shoving that demand, increasing their demand. Just because of their worries that they won't be able to get the material when they would like to see it for their projects.
Brad Rudover:
That makes sense.
Brett Ekart:
Well Brett.
Brett Ekart:
Real quick, Brad. The reason we had, and I'll go into it, but the reason we had Brad on here today is A, Brad's a good friend of ours. We do some business together. And B, Brad, I don't know probably a couple years ago, started working on his project Scrap University. And with that, I know it's a passion project of his. Something he is very passionate about. And he had a pretty big announcement that he wanted to kind of talk about. And we wanted to give him this platform to do that because we respect what he is doing. He's got as much love for the industry as we do. And take it away Brad, let everybody know what you got cooking.
Brad Rudover:
Yeah. Thanks Brett. Thanks Nick. I'll call you Professor Snyder since Nick is actually in our program. And when you get to the red metal section, you're going to see what Nick knows. And it's like, we want to build this program with all of the people in the industry, right? Like we actually just added a new professor. We have like a brand new professor. He just sent me some videos, Eric Zwilsky from Potomac metals on the east coast, super smart dude, been in the business like his whole life kind of like you Brett, and he's just like, this is awesome. What a great idea. How can I be a part of it?
Brad Rudover:
So that's what we're trying to say here is that it's not me. It's about getting all of the talented people in our industry to then put their information into our online program. So then everyone in the entire scrap business will be an expert. Can you imagine having everyone in your yard is a expert? Like how cool is that right?
Brad Rudover:
So for the past two years we've worked on building it into our website. Filming and then editing and all this sort of stuff. And then we engaged the associations. We spoke with CARI, which is the Canadian association of recycling industries. And then ISRI, everybody knows who ISRI is. And both of them were super receptive. They were like, wow, this is really needed. And again, we spoke about this at the start where traditionally people just don't want to share information for competitive reasons. Like they think knowing the difference between number one and number two is proprietary. And it's just like, no, it's not. And so, but we're trying to make it so that like everyone from an administrator who's just pushing paperwork. They will now know the difference between 304 and 316 stainless, it's that needed. And we've seen a number of people register from all different roles in the company. And so,
Brett Ekart:
Which is pretty cool. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So what's the announcement. What's happening this week?
Brad Rudover:
So actually it happened last week and it was like so hard for me to kind of keep it in, but ISRI's like just relax man. They had their board of directors meeting as did CARI. They had totally separate board of directors meetings. And in Charleston, South Carolina, Rebecca Turner is the director of education at ISRI. She announced to the board that we now have a partnership Scrap U and ISRI and Scrap U and CARI we're a partnership in terms of educating the industry. So then it just becomes a member benefit for if you're a ISRI member or a CARI member. And so we want to make it special. So both ISRI and CARI members get 25% discount on our program. So people want to say oh, well, why would I become ISRI member? Well you get a deal on Scrap U, you know? So.
Brett Ekart:
There you go man. I like it. Well, that's awesome man. I'm glad, I'm happy for you. I know you're passionate about this industry, so that's always good to see. Those connections being made and people buying into the program that you've spent so much time putting together.
Brad Rudover:
It's honestly a dream come true because this was literally just a concept that I was like kind of kicking around years ago. And one of my phone calls with Robin, she's the president of ISRI and she said, yeah like this is a good idea. So when you hear from someone like, Hey a lot of our friends that helped us build this, they're like great idea. When you hear from someone that's running the biggest association in the world, you kind of go, okay if she thinks it's a good idea, it must be a good idea. So Brett what you were saying earlier, execution. Right? And so we just executed, you know?
Nick Snyder:
I love it, man. It's a good program.
Brett Ekart:
It's a congratulations to you. It's a good program. Nick's involved, we're involved. Other super smart people in the recycling industry are involved. So if you get a chance, go check it out.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah. I did your course. It's awesome. It's really well built, really easy to utilize. And there's a lot of, I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, so I know most of that stuff. But someone that just started, I think there's a real need for that to onboard some new employees, or even current ones in production. Where you want to maybe teach them, Hey, I need to move you over to this field or this field, like go through the aluminum course or go through the copper course. I think there's a real value there. And I think I could just see it. It's going to just grow. It's going to be amazing. So congratulations again, Brad.
Brad Rudover:
Hey thank you.
Brett Ekart:
Have a great week, everybody.
Nick Snyder:
All right. Thanks everybody.
Brett Ekart:
Sorry. have a great week. Take care.
Nick Snyder:
See ya.
Brett Ekart:
All right bye.