Operating leadership for steel, metals, and recycling businesses.
Rothwell works inside privately held businesses across the metals supply chain: scrap processors and recyclers, service centers and distributors, traders, fabricators and the manufacturers that consume metal. The work is pricing and margin, inventory and exposure, systems, the commercial process, and readiness for the next owner.
Experience and record
The firm’s experience in this industry
- Trading steel internationally
- Selling it from a service center
- Reporting and analyzing its prices
- Working the scrap and recycling side
- Procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and operations as executives
The principal’s operating record, outside metals
The firm’s experience in this industry is firsthand: trading steel internationally, selling it from a service center, reporting and analyzing its prices, working the scrap and recycling side, and running procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and operations as executives. The principal’s operating record is in founder-led businesses outside the metals industry: three taken through a sale, to a publicly traded company, an international private-equity firm and a family office, running the operating side of diligence on each, and a loss-making company turned into a $1.3 million EBITDA business that went on to sell. Rothwell states the two separately on purpose: the industry knowledge and the operating method are both real, and the page does not claim steel engagement results it does not yet have. See Selected Work and About.
The problems we solve
Margin that moves with the market instead of with your decisions
The business buys and sells on instinct and relationships; the policy for what to buy, what to hold, what to quote and where the limits are lives in one head. We write it down, put exposure limits around it, and run it with the team.
Inventory and price exposure nobody can quite measure
Processors carry exposure between the gate and the mill; service centers and distributors carry days of supply, slow movers and remnants that a lender or a buyer will value differently than the owner does. We make the exposure visible, set the targets, and build the discipline that holds them.
A system that does not match the business
A yard-management or metals ERP change is planned, under way, or has gone wrong, and the implementation is digitizing old habits. We run the discovery and the process design on your side of the table, vendor-neutral, so the system fits how the business actually works. We do not sell or implement software.
A commercial process that runs through the owner
Pricing, key accounts, supplier terms and approvals route through one person. We build the inside sales structure, pricing governance and handoffs that let the business buy and sell without the owner on every call.
Leadership the business cannot yet hire full time
A fractional COO, VP of Operations or Chief Commercial Officer inside the business, with agreed responsibilities, decision authority, scope and commitment.
A sale, a recapitalization or a handover inside three years, with records that will not survive diligence
Operating metrics packaged the way a buyer reads them, documentation of how the business runs, founder-dependency work, the operating sections of the data room, and the compliance housekeeping a buyer’s team finds first. Alongside your banker, counsel and CPA.
Who this is for
- Privately held or family-owned businesses in the metals supply chain, roughly $10 million to $150 million in revenue: scrap processors and recyclers with processing equipment, service centers and processors with first-stage processing, dealers and traders with inventory and mill relationships, structural and precision fabricators and metal component makers, and industrial distributors with value-added services.
- Owners in the second or third generation, or a next-generation leader newly in the seat, who have inherited a system, a customer book and a set of habits built by a predecessor.
- Businesses whose results are real and whose records are thin: pricing logic in one head, inventory valued by feel, a legacy system with spreadsheets around it, a commercial process that runs through the owner, no second layer of management a buyer would recognize.
- Owners twelve to thirty-six months from a sale, a recapitalization or a handover who want the operating side ready before the process starts.
Who it is not for
- Integrated mills and large groups with their own corporate development and operating teams.
- Businesses that need a banker, a broker, a CPA or a quality-of-earnings provider today. Rothwell works alongside all of them and does not replace any of them.
- Anyone looking for metallurgy, welding engineering, AISC certification work, environmental permitting, plant-floor lean at scale, or the delivery of a large ERP implementation. We will tell you who does that.
- A business that wants a price forecast. The firm reads the same reports the industry reads; the work is what to do about them inside your business.
Segments inside the practice
Scrap processors and metals recyclers
Yards, shredders, shears and balers, dealers and brokers, feeding EAF mills, foundries and export. The usual work: gate-to-mill price exposure, yard systems and data, compliance housekeeping before a buyer finds it, and succession in family businesses that consolidators are calling on.
Service centers and distributors
Flat-rolled and long products, processing, industrial PVF and building products. The usual work: contract strategy as mills change allocations, inventory discipline through the cycle, systems migrations forced by vendor consolidation, and readiness for a sale.
Traders
Import, export and domestic trading with inventory. The usual work: exposure limits, documentation that satisfies a lender, and a commercial process that does not depend on one person’s relationships.
Fabricators and industrial manufacturers
Structural and precision fabrication, metal components, and the manufacturers that consume metal and generate prime scrap. The usual work: margin and delivery performance under metal-cost swings, quoting discipline, and the operating record a buyer wants to see.
Why now
Mills hold the upper hand on contract terms, inventories are lean ahead of new capacity, tariffs have rewritten landed cost and compliance, and consolidators are calling on family businesses at every link of the chain. A strong year is the right time to put policy, exposure limits and records in place; the weaker year behind it is when the discipline pays. The firm’s reading of the market, with the figures, is in Insights.
How this differs from consulting
Rothwell does not study the business and hand over a plan, and it does not sell software, data or transactions. Its work is inside the business for the months in which pricing, inventory, systems and the commercial process are actually changed: defined outcomes with dates, run in the operating cadence alongside the owner, through execution and handoff, by people who have worked in the trading, distribution and market-intelligence seats of this industry. The firm is principal-led, with partners and specialists engaged for the work at hand. How Rothwell works.
How we work with the rest of the industry
Alongside your banker and counsel on a sale, your CPA and quality-of-earnings provider on the numbers, your systems vendor on the implementation, your mill and consumer relationships on contract terms, and the associations on benchmarks and standards. If the right answer is one of those firms instead of us, we will say so in the first conversation.
Questions owners ask
Do you forecast prices?
No. We read the same reports you do and turn them into policy inside your business: what to buy, what to hold, what to quote, and where the limits are.
Do you implement ERP or yard software?
No. We run the discovery and the process design on your side of the table and work with the vendor you choose, so the system matches the business.
Can you help us get ready to sell without starting a process?
Yes. That is most of the readiness work: metrics, documentation, the second layer, the data room, and the compliance items a buyer finds first, twelve to thirty-six months ahead.
How are engagements structured?
Rothwell operates with clearly defined commercial arrangements, transparent responsibilities, and appropriate management of potential conflicts of interest. Scope, fee and responsibilities are agreed in writing before any work starts.
Tell us which product line, which contract, or which transition is the problem.
Where is the business exposed, what changed this year, and what has to be true before the next contract season or the next owner? We will tell you whether Rothwell is the right operating fit, and if we are not, who in the industry you should be talking to instead.
Start an operating conversation