South Bend Tribune reported that for nearly 65 years, family run Steel Warehouse has been growing and expanding. One of Steel Warehouse's current expansions is expected to be completed later this year at its plant at 1400 Riverside Drive in South Bend.

The new equipment will allow the company to do more manufacturing, which will add value to its process for about 20 different current customers, and to inventory more products. It is hiring people for 15 or 16 new jobs. The industrial network also includes Lock Joint Tube, SFI and Chesterfield Steel.

Mr Mike Lerman president of the South Bend-based steel distribution company, which maintains a corporate headquarters and primary plant where it processes light to heavy gauge carbon steel at 2722 W. Tucker Drive and a small manufacturing plant on Walnut, both in South Bend said “We have taken on the delivery of additional equipment. Although it is not optimal, we are running some of it right now.”

Mr Lerman said that "We buy steel from steel mills and convert it into a product that is considered production ready for our customers. In South Bend, we could, most of the time, have in excess of 100,000 tons of steel."

Mr Lerman said that the amount of steel shipped through service centers like Steel Warehouse has increased significantly as service centers take over larger shares of the market.

He added that "Years ago, Ford and John Deere had just the same type of processing equipment, but they had to slim down and they no longer have those assets. They wanted to get rid of them and let someone else hold the inventory."

Steel Warehouse serves customers in agriculture, construction equipment, trailer trucks and cranes and in the contract fabrication market. That can include several processes: pickling, which is acid cleaning; slitting to customer width specifications; temper passing and flattening coils into rectangles. The company also inventories both finished and raw goods for its customers. Currently, Steel Warehouse is looking at working with a steel mill in Alabama and another company on a joint venture in Houston. It also is expanding its Milwaukee plant.

(Sourced from www.southbendtribune.com)