Gerdau Special Steel

What Gerdau Special Steel does

Gerdau Special Steel is the North American operating division of Brazilian steelmaker Gerdau S/A (B3:GGBR4), manufactured primarily through electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking. The division operates a vertically integrated platform spanning 31 scrap yards and 4 shredders, three strategic EAF structural mills in Petersburg (Virginia), Cartersville (Georgia) and Midlothian (Texas), plus the Monroe (Michigan) SBQ mill, the Huntington (Indiana) steering rack blank facility, and four rail spike plants in Lancaster (South Carolina), Paragould (Arkansas), Sand Springs (Oklahoma) and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu (Québec). Together these assets transform more than 10 million tons of recycled scrap metal annually into long steel products including special bar quality (SBQ), merchant bar, structural beams, rebar, piling and a wide portfolio of value-added engineered sections.

The product portfolio is organized into Special Bar Quality (clean steels, Macplus cold-finished bars, MACPRIME cut blanks, AccuCaliber gun barrel steels, quench-and-tempered bars, hot rolled engineered bars), Merchant Bar (rounds, squares, flats, angles, channels, GGMULTI multi-grade), Structural Steel (wide flange beams, I-beams, super-light beams), Piling (H-Pile, PZC sheet piling with proprietary American interlock, PS flat sheet piling), Rebar, and Special/Value-Added products spanning rail spikes, track shoes, agricultural components, grinding media and aluminum smelting anodes/cathodes. The division holds several exclusive North American positions — only true ASTM A722 stretched and stress relieved bar producer, only complete steering rack blank production line, largest railroad spike producer at 80,000 tons/year, and leader in SBQ products. Gerdau's three structural mills are third-party verified at the lowest embodied carbon GWP among U.S. producers (Petersburg 0.527, Cartersville 0.686, Midlothian 0.713 CO2eq/ton steel).

Revenue is generated through B2B sales of physical steel products on a quote-based, quote-not-publicly-disclosed pricing model, delivered via a direct sales team (800-237-0230), the e-Gerdau digital customer portal, and a network of strategically located manufacturing and downstream facilities. Primary customer segments are Construction, Manufacturing (agricultural and off-highway OEMs), Transportation (rail, automotive, Class 8 trucking), Mining/Mineral Processing and Energy/Infrastructure (wind tower anchoring, post-tensioning). Major recent capex includes a $70.3 million three-year upgrade of Monroe's EAF and ladle refining plus construction of the GMSP true-ASTM-A722 facility, and the division received B Corp Certification for North American operations in 2024.

Name

Gerdau Special Steel

Legal name

Gerdau S/A

Website

https://gerdau.com

Company type

Public

Founded year

1901

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

501–1,000 employees

Short description

Gerdau Special Steel is the North American EAF steelmaking division of Brazilian parent Gerdau S/A, producing over 10 million tons annually of special bar quality, merchant bar, structural beams, rebar and piling from 31 scrap yards and mills across the U.S. and Canada for construction, manufacturing and transportation customers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Long steel products (SBQ, merchant bar, structural beams, rebar, piling)

NAICS

Iron and Steel Mills and Ferroalloy Manufacturing (331110), Rolling and Drawing of Purchased Steel (33122)

SIC

Steel Works, Blast Furnaces & Rolling & Finishing Mills (3310)

akta.pro primary industry

Long Products Manufacturing (Rebar, Wire Rod, Merchant Bar, Sections/Beams) (IMAKABAH)

akta.pro secondary industries

Industrial & Manufacturing Scrap Recycling (Factory Scrap, Turnings, Offcuts) (IMAKAMAE), Metal Melting & Secondary Smelting/Refining (Recycled Feedstock Producers) (EUAIAJAJ), Specialty & Alloy Steel (Stainless, Tool Steel, Electrical Steel, High-Strength/HSLA) (IMAKABAJ)

Keywords

• Special bar quality steel
• Structural steel beams
• Merchant bar products
• Metals recycling services
• Steel piling products

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Supply Chain, Operations, Infrastructure, Personnel, Technology or R&D

Revenue model

1. Steel Products Manufacturing and Sales: Manufactures and sells steel products including special bar quality, merchant bar, structural beams, rebar, piling, and semi-finished products to construction, manufacturing, and transportation industries across North America. Revenue derived from product sales with pricing based on steel grades, dimensions, and order volume.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Gerdau Special Steel manufactures and sells long steel products, including special bar quality (SBQ), merchant bar, structural beams, rebar, piling, and value-added processed bars, from a network of electric arc furnace mills and downstream facilities across North America. The company also operates an integrated metals recycling business that converts more than 10 million tons of scrap per year into new steel, serving OEMs and contractors in construction, manufacturing, and transportation with both standardized mill products and customized cut-to-specification offerings.

Product overview

Gerdau Special Steel is a leading North American steel producer operating a network of metals recycling locations, steel mills, and downstream facilities. The company's product portfolio is organized into six main categories: Special Bar Quality (SBQ) products including value-added processed bars like Macplus® cold-finished bars and MACPRIME® cut blanks, Steering Rack Blanks, Camshaft Blanks, and engineered bars; Merchant Bar Quality (MBQ) products including rounds, squares, flats, angles, channels, and structural profiles; Structural Steel including wide flange beams, I-beams, and Super-Light Beams; Piling products including H-Pile and sheet piling (PZC™ and PS Flat); Rebar products; and Special and Value-Added products including rail products, agricultural implements, and industrial components. The company also provides metals recycling services across 31 scrap yards and 4 shredders, supporting the circular economy with high percentages of recycled raw materials in their steel production.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Macplus Cold-Finished Bars: Turned and polished cold-finished bars at four manufacturing facilities in North America, providing uniform defect-free, decarb-free, and scale-free bright surface with tight size tolerances.
• MACPRIME Cut Blanks
• AccuCaliber Gun Barrel Steels
• Gerdau Jumbo 75S
• PZC Sheet Piling
• GGMULTI
• Billets
• A722 Bars

Products and services

• AccuCaliber Gun Barrel Steels Premium gun barrel steels produced through a unique rotary casting process providing superior performance for gun barrel drilling, reaming, and machining with less distortion. Sold to firearms manufacturers requiring high-quality barrel-grade steel.
• Billets Intermediate-stage steel product formed through continuous casting, used as feedstock for rolling long steel products such as structural shapes, wire rod, tubes, angles, and rebar. Sold to rolling mills and for OEM forging.
• Macplus Cold-Finished Bars Turned and polished cold-finished bars providing a uniform defect-free, decarb-free, and scale-free bright surface with tight size tolerances and concentricity, improving machinability up to 30%. Produced at four North American facilities for machining-intensive OEMs.
• MACPRIME Precut Bars and Cut Blanks Special-bar quality steel bars precut to customers' exact dimensional specifications with automated full dimensional inspection, tolerances as low as ±0.005" length, ±2 gram weight, 0.006" perpendicularity, and 0.003" TIR. Serves forgers, machining facilities, and cold formers including camshaft blanks.
• Steering Rack Blanks Precision engineered cut blanks with tight TIR controls and specialized quench and tempering, inspection, cutting, packaging, bar centering, and end drilling capabilities. The only complete steering rack blank production line in North America, serving automotive Tier-1 suppliers.
• Clean Steels (Bearing Quality Steels) Bearing quality steels produced in continuous casters with enhanced melt practice and strict process controls, meeting ASTM A295, A485, A534, and A866 specifications. Produced at Monroe, Michigan with 240mm bloom capability for improved reduction ratio and surface quality. Sold to bearing manufacturers.
• Grinding Rod and Grinding Ball N90 grade high-carbon, micro-alloyed steel grinding rods (2" through 4" diameter) and high-carbon forged grinding balls for rod and ball mills in copper, iron ore, gold, cement, nickel, and phosphate processing operations. Sold to mining and mineral processing operators.
• Stretched Round (ASTM A722) Bars Bars produced for construction and post-tensioning applications, stretched and stress relieved to enhance steel properties. Gerdau is North America's only producer of true A722 compliant bars, proof-tested and cold-stressed to 80% ultimate tensile strength, available in lengths up to 65 feet. Used for wind tower anchoring, transmission pole mounting, and joint post-tensioning.
• Gerdau Jumbo 75S #18 rebar-sized SBQ bar increased in size to allow application of machined threads for transmission pole mounting, with heat treatment for minimum tensile and Charpy impact properties. Sold to utility and pole manufacturers.
• Continuous Thread Bar Threaded bars produced for construction and post-tensioning applications with exceptional load transfer properties, commonly used for repair and strengthening projects and joints between concrete and steel structures. Sold to infrastructure contractors.
• Wide Flange Beam Hot-rolled wide flange (WF) beams used in structural steel construction for industrial facilities, healthcare facilities, commercial buildings, and multi-family residential projects. Produced at three EAF mills (Petersburg, Cartersville, Midlothian) with the lowest embodied carbon among U.S. producers.
• Standard I-Beam Hot-rolled Standard I-Beams used by OEMs in construction of machines and equipment, lifts and hoists, maritime platforms, overhead cranes, and monorails. Sold to industrial equipment manufacturers.
• Super-Light Beam (and Processed Super-Light Beam) Hot-rolled beams designed to provide load-bearing strength in an extremely light-weight profile, commonly used in rail and truck trailer manufacturing. Processed version available with wax coating, prime paint, holes punched, or welded clips to meet customer specifications.
• Miscellaneous (M) Beams / Bantam Beams Low weight-per-foot hot rolled beams primarily used in frames of manufactured homes and recreational vehicles (RVs), also utilized in purlin applications and steel dunnage. Sold to manufactured housing and RV OEMs.
• H-Pile Structural beams dimensionally square, most commonly driven into soil for deep foundation applications to support large buildings and bridges. Sold to foundation contractors and piling installers.
• PZC Sheet Piling Wider, lighter and stronger sheet piling sections than traditional Z-profile sheet piling, featuring the preferred North American ball-and-socket interlock providing greater degrees of swing and flexibility. Used for marine, foundation, transportation, and environmental applications.
• PS Flat Sheet Piling Hot-rolled flat sheet piling sections for civil construction cellular designs, with three-point interlock contact providing exceptional capacity to transfer tensile loads. Sold to marine and civil infrastructure contractors.
• Straight Rebar Steel reinforcement bar used as the framework for reinforced concrete in a wide range of construction projects, produced across Gerdau's North American mill network. Sold to concrete contractors and rebar fabricators.
• Merchant Bar (MBQ) Family Hot-rolled merchant bar quality products including Bar Channel, Equal Leg Angles, Unequal Leg Angles, Flats, Hand Rail Bar, MC Channel, Pencil Rod, Rounds, Squares, and Structural Channel. Produced with extremely high percentages of recycled pre-consumer and post-consumer scrap. Sold to OEMs and distributors across durable goods, ornamental, structural, and OEM manufacturing applications.
• Pitch Diameter Rounds Threaded bars with threads applied in a roll threading operation, used as bolts, double end rods, or threaded rods in heavy construction, utility, power generation, agriculture, marine, and petrochemical applications.
• SBQ Flat Special bar quality flats ranging from small strip applications for durable goods to large sections for structural nonresidential construction such as baseplate, brackets, tanks, barges, and railcars.
• SBQ Squares and SBQ Round Cornered Squares Special bar quality squares (3/8" to 1 1/2") and round cornered squares (1 1/4" to 2 1/4" with corner radii 1/8" to 5/16") used in trailer components, ground anchors, agricultural equipment (augers), and cold-drawn rail/construction applications.
• Round Cornered Flat (and Spring Flat) Flats with corners rounded to specific radii (0.050", 0.075", and 0.125") and spring flats with both edges rounded to approximately 65-85% of thickness, produced with a special radius heat treatment process for leaf spring assemblies in vehicle and trailer suspension systems. Sold to suspension and trailer OEMs.
• Quench and Tempered Bars Bars produced through advanced induction heat treating and proprietary quench process treating each bar individually, adding strength and improving resistance to impact and abrasion. Enables customers to machine distortion-free parts and eliminate downstream processes such as stress relieving or straightening.
• Heat Treated Bars Heat treatment of bars to improve machinability, increase toughness, improve cold forming characteristics, alter hardness and tensile strength, relieve residual stress, and improve shearability. Sold to OEMs requiring custom material properties.
• Hot Rolled Engineered Bars Special bar quality engineered hot rolled steel bar rounds in diameters from 5/8" to 6-1/16" and lengths from 15' to 40', with full ladle metallurgy and vacuum degassing. Converted into safety-critical parts for automotive, commercial, agricultural, military, oil and gas, aerospace, and energy segments.
• Hot Rolled Bars Special bar quality engineered hot rolled steel round bars with full ladle metallurgy and vacuum degassing, converted into safety-critical parts for automotive, commercial, agricultural, military, oil and gas, aerospace, and energy markets.
• Rail Spike Railroad spikes produced to A.R.E.M.A. specifications at Gerdau's four manufacturing facilities (Lancaster SC, Paragould AR, Sand Springs OK, and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu QC), producing over 80,000 tons annually.
• Light Rail 30, 40, and 60 pounds per yard light rail products for overhead crane rails or mining applications, available in various lengths and processed with drill holes. Sold to industrial and mining operators.
• Follower Block Heat treated product used in rail transportation, incorporated in railcar equipment that absorbs shock when two railcars are joined together. Sold to rail car builders.
• All Rail Reinforcing Bars Rail reinforcing bars in one basic geometry with four distinct weight and dimensional varieties, used in railway intersections where higher forces are exerted on rails. Sold to rail maintenance contractors.
• All Rail Tie (Steel Tie) Steel substitute for wooden rail ties with greater durability and longer life cycle, used in track construction. Sold to railroad operators and contractors.
• Guard Rail Beam 6" x 8.5 lbs./ft. sections typically galvanized and used as supports for highway guard rails, also effective as posts supporting large solar projects. Sold to transportation and solar infrastructure contractors.
• Elevator Guide Rail Hot-rolled raw guide rails processed to meet customer specifications, typically produced to ASTM A36 standards. Sold to elevator manufacturers.
• Dowel Bar Steel bar used in civil and structural construction for building industrial floors and roadways, providing mechanical connection between concrete slabs. Sold to concrete construction contractors.
• Frame Section Specialized hot-rolled steel section produced to stringent specifications as a support arm in heavy and off-highway equipment. Sold to heavy equipment manufacturers.
• Fork Tine Specialized fork sections designed for fork tines in materials handling industry, available in carbon or alloyed grades with customized chemistry options. Sold to material handling equipment manufacturers.
• Cultivator Blades Cultivator blades designed for agricultural implements, available in two configurations: Plain and Top Recessed. Sold to agricultural equipment OEMs.
• Plowshare Blades Plow blades designed for agricultural implements, available in three configurations: Metric, Standard, and Ribbed. Sold to agricultural equipment OEMs.
• Extra Edge, Bevel Flats/Curveds, and Track Shoe Sections A family of carbon or boron steel sections - Extra Edge, Double/Single Bevel Flat, Double/Single Bevel Curved, Half Arrow, and Track Shoes (150mm-260mm widths) - used in heavy equipment, snow removal, mining equipment, and construction equipment conveyor applications. Sold to heavy equipment OEMs.
• Cathode Bars and Anode Round Steel sections designed and manufactured for aluminum smelting, available in size ranges from 120mm square up to 140mm x 280mm. Sold to aluminum smelters.
• GGMULTI Multi-Grade Merchant Bar Multi-grade merchant bar quality product available on standard lengths covering multiple ASTM grades (e.g., ASTM A36, ASTM A529-50, ASTM A572-50). Sold to distributors and contractors needing flexible multi-spec inventory.
• Metals Recycling Services Purchasing, sorting, processing, preparation, packaging, and selling of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal across 31 scrap yards and 4 shredders in North America, supplying feedstock for Gerdau's EAF mills and external customers.

Quantifiable outcome

• Gerdau Petersburg produces structural steel with GWP of 0.527 CO2eq/ton - lowest among U.S. producers
• +2 more outcomes

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature8 records

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America and integrated iron ore producer that has expanded into stainless and long products. Broad incumbent across multiple steel categories with overlap in construction-grade steel.
• ArcelorMittal USA: North American subsidiary of the world's largest steelmaker, with integrated and EAF operations producing a broad range of flat and long products. Competes in long products but with a wider portfolio than Gerdau.
• United States Steel Corporation: Major integrated steel producer with flat-rolled, tubular, and long products. Competes with Gerdau in structural steel and certain long product categories but with a much broader product and operational footprint.

Direct peers

• Radius Recycling (formerly Schnitzer Steel): One of the largest ferrous and non-ferrous scrap recyclers in North America, with integrated steel-making via its shredders and mills. Directly comparable to Gerdau's scrap-yard network and recycled-content steel positioning.
• Nucor Corporation: Largest EAF steel producer in the U.S. with extensive long products portfolio including rebar, structural beams, merchant bar, and SBQ. Direct competitor across Gerdau's core product categories and the most natural strategic benchmark for North American EAF long steel economics.
• Steel Dynamics, Inc. U.S. EAF-based steel producer with structural and rail products, merchant bar, rebar, and specialty shapes. Competes directly with Gerdau in long products and SBQ, with a comparable scrap-to-finished product operating model.
• TimkenSteel (now part of The Timken Company): Specialty steel producer of SBQ bars, mechanical tubing, and alloy steel for automotive, industrial, and energy markets. Closest direct competitor in Gerdau's SBQ and engineered bar franchises, including bearing-quality and special alloy steels.
• Commercial Metals Company (CMC): Major North American producer of long products including rebar, merchant bar, and structural steel, with vertically integrated scrap recycling (CMCI). Direct competitor in rebar and merchant bar, with similar EAF and recycling footprint.
• Steel Summit Holdings (formerly EVRAZ North America): Producer of long products including rail, structural, rebar, and pipe with mills across the U.S. Competes with Gerdau in structural beams, piling, and rail products including railroad spikes.

Regional players

• Olympic Steel: U.S. metals service center and steel processor focused on flat-rolled and plate products with some long product distribution. Less of a direct manufacturer competitor; adjacent comparison for downstream steel service and processing economics.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

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Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Subsidiaries12 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Gerdau Special Steel