CMC & the CMC Steel Group

Commercial Metals Company (CMC), Headquartered in Dallas, Texas is a leader in Manufacturing, processing, fabrication, trading and distribution of steel, primary and secondary metals, and numerous raw materials. The major segments that comprise CMC are; Manufacturing, Recycling and Marketing and Trading.

The Manufacturing segment consists of a copper tube manufacturer in New Market, Virginia and the over 70 locations of the CMC Steel Group.

The Recycling segment consisting of 42 recycling plants is one of the largest processors of scrap metals. These plants annually ship in excess of 2 million tons of scrap metals both nonferrous and ferrous.

The Marketing and Trading segment buys and sells steel, nonferrous semis, primary and secondary metals and industrial raw materials through a global network of offices.

The CMC Steel Group had its beginnings in 1947 when Marvin Selig started Structural Metals, Inc. in Seguin, Texas (SMI-Texas). In order to reach more of the market area and to achieve greater long-term growth and development, the groundwork was laid in the early 1950s for what was to become the Steel Group -- a family of affiliated reinforcing and structural steel fabricating companies. The first of these, Capitol City Steel Company, established in Austin, Texas, and Safety Steel, established in Victoria, Texas, came in 1952.

In 1957, Hugh Ghormley established Texas Cold Finished Steel in Houston. These served as the nucleus of what has become the CMC Steel Group. In 1963, CMC acquired majority interest in the SMI steel mill and its family of fabricating companies. CMC, founded by Moses Feldman and later developed by his son, Jacob, had its beginnings in 1915 in one small scrap yard in Fort Worth, Texas. The resulting merger of SMI and CMC, completed in 1968, produced a working blend of parts -- the one part, CMC, a processor, trader and distributor of metals and raw materials; and the other part, SMI, a steel manufacturer and fabricator.

Significant among the acquisitions and start-ups since the SMI family of companies became a part of CMC were: the 1983 acquisition of the closed Connors Steel mini-mill in Birmingham, Alabama which became the Steel Group's second steel mill, known as SMI Steel-Alabama; the 1987 start-up of SMI Steel-Arkansas in Magnolia, Arkansas, a rail re-rolling mill similar to but more sophisticated than the rail re-rolling operation first used by Marvin Selig at SMI-Texas; the 1993 acquisition of Shepler's, a group of concrete related product supply stores in the Houston and Central Texas markets; and the 1994 acquisition of the Owen Steel family of companies headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina.

Similar to Marvin Selig's development of the Steel Group, Owen Steel had been developed over the years by Franklin D. Owen Sr. and his son, Franklin Jr., from a single structural fabricating operation established in 1936 into a family of companies that included a steel mill (SMI Steel-South Carolina), scrap yards, joist manufacturing plants, and structural and rebar fabricators. With the addition of the Owen companies, the Steel Group gained a solid position in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic states to complement its solid reputation in the South and Southwest.