From humble beginnings - 30 years and counting!!

SPM was formed back in 1993 by a group of experienced steel executives who also happened to be close friends. After the acquisition of many Independent Steel Service centres by Bristish Steel Distribution in the late 80's, this group decided to cut free and set up on their own. Initially, from a rented office armed with a telephone and contacts list, SPM was born from this early era. In the first month we supplied 30 tonnes of material, but more importantly, the wheels had been put in motion.

 By 1998, SPM has laid roots in Unit 14 in Burntwood and had installed a slitting line, rolling mill and 2 narrow decoil lines. SPM was predominantly an Automotive and Racking supplier and annual volumes were around 30-35,000 tonnes per annum

SPM remained a valued niche Automotive and racking supplier for the next 10 years, with no real ambiton by the original founders to 'put our heads above the parapit' and have to compete directly with larger competitiors for business.

In 2008, we had the global banking crisis and subsequent recession. This taught us a valuable lesson and highlighted the vulnerability of being exposed to one market sector too much. Automotive schedules died and we had no plan B in reality. At this point we decided we needed to have a more healthy spread of industry sectors. From this point on the decision was made to upgrade the processing kit and create a wider customer base in new sectors. The long search for a slitting line was a direct result of this market crash and although it probably took us another 5 years to start on SPM Phase 2, the decision had already been made.

In 2014, we put pen to paper to increase the size of the warehouse from 35,000 to 50,000 square feet, specifically to house our Georg Slitting Line. As a German machine maker, this manufacturer is held in high esteem in the slitting world. The Georg Line was bought specifically to produce lighter gauges (from 0.40 mm) and larger O/D's 1900 mm on and off. A combination of these two factors gave us access to other market sectors where this was deemed the norm.

A double looping unit was also purchased during this time specifically to allow us to run 0.50 mm to large outside diameters. The total investment was just over £2.5 million. Fully operation in 2016, we then entered a phase of large growth and our sales moved from 40,000 tonnes per annum to around 98,000 tonnes. A 120% growth rate in 1 year. This growth journey peaked in 2019 where we supplied 127,000 tonnes.

SPM is a privately owned Steel Service Centre operating out of our 50,000 sqft facility in Burntwood. We are valued supplier to many market sectors of high quality products coupled with excellent service. We supply around 100,000 tonnes per annum to end users and have built many strong relationships with new customers over the last 7-8 years. Since the slitting line was installed, we also invested around £1.5 million in a Bronx light gauge decoil line - (0.50mm - 3.00 mm), which allows us to offer a one-stop-shop for many of our customers.

We offer a serious alternative to other large service centres and tend to do business more with repeat contractual customers and place less emphasis on spot business. This is where we feel we can create the best advantage for our customers whilst offering continuity to our suppliers.

SPM want to be at the forefront of the transition towards decarbonisation of the steel industry and play our part in the protection of the environment. This is unusual as this change is normally driven by either the final end user or the original supplier, but we feel we can give ourselves and our customers the first-mover advantage in making this shift.

SPM will also be announcing some very ambitious Scope 1 and 2 CO2 targets shortly so that we can also prove that our emissions are well below industry norms to allow us to offer the greenest steel on the market.