Breaking ground in North America

USA Chief Investment Officer Grant Quasha says GFG Alliance will build strength in North America by taking the group’s vision and ground-breaking business model into the region.

Breaking into the world’s largest market is no mean feat, but with the right strategy, people, and resources, the opportunity for success is boundless.

Armed with GFG Alliance’s vision and long-term business model, Grant Quasha and his team are taking on the challenge and steadily making our presence known in the North American region.

In conversation with SPOKE in November, Quasha said the team has been making significant headway in three key areas.

The first is growing our physical asset base. We’ve made two acquisitions already; a steel recycling facility in Florida which is running very well, and a formerly shuttered steel mill in South Carolina which we successfully re-started at the end of June. With the re-opening of the mill, we’ve brought over 100 former employees back on, and we’re aiming to ramp production up to historic levels of utilisation by the second quarter of next year. Beyond our two operations, we plan to add additional assets over the next few months to complement our growing footprint and help us gain critical mass.

The second piece is tying some of the more global aspects of the group commercially into the US. Historically some of the GFG businesses have sold product into the US, we are trying to make that more common. We’re making a big effort to show that we’re a global business that can supply from different regions, and I think we’re building success on that front, bringing our first shipment of Australian wire rod in a few days ago.

The third area where we’ve had success and growth is developing the team. We’re in the process of building out a new central office in New York and that should be ready in the second quarter of next year, to house a focussed core of the management and strategy team for the North American region.

On the initial progress with the re-opening of the steel mill, Quasha attributes it to our strategy which he says is about:

Finding good assets that may have not been as loved in other people’s hands and having success by taking a longer-term view with a slightly different angle.

However, the path forward is not without its bumps.

It’s a very big, fragmented market with lots of opportunity, but also lots of folks who are chasing the same opportunity set. It’s also a sophisticated market, so it’s not easy to get foothold in an intelligent way. While we may be large globally, over here we’re still a small fish in big pond, so much of the effort includes raising the group’s profile and showing everyone what we’ve done in other places and how we’d replicate that, Quasha said.

Speaking of navigating the way ahead, Quasha sees the group’s values as critical to our success in the North American region.

We’re focussed on running businesses sustainably through business cycles with minimal impact to the environment. We’re not here for the short-term, we’re here for the long-term and we treat our employees as if they are family.

He sees this as key differentiator,

We may have folks who are pursuing a similar strategy to ours, but they are looking at a five to seven year private-equity type timeframe, whereas our focus is much longer term, and stressing that is an important selling point.