New position: Corporate treasurer, Gerdau Ameristeel, Tampa. Previous position: Assistant treasurer, Gerdau Ameristeel, Tampa
By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published September 15, 2003
As a veteran man of steel - more specifically, Gerdau Ameristeel, the second largest minimill steel producer in North America - Harley Scardoelli has new responsibilities with his promotion to the company's corporate treasurer.
These duties include overseeing investor relations, insurance, cash management, pension fund administration, debt management and frequent negotiations with banks and other financial institutions.
Scardoelli is a native of Porto Alegre, Brazil, international headquarters for Gerdau S.A., the majority stockholder of Gerdau Ameristeel. He went to work for the company 16 years ago and has since worked in Canada and Florida. He transferred to Tampa in 2000.
"Basically, I've got to be in touch especially with the Canadian operation and have to also meet and travel to meet with different banks in different locations like Atlanta and New York City," Scardoelli said. "I try to go to at least a couple or three mills every year."
Gerdau Ameristeel has 10 mills in the United States and Canada with annual manufacturing capacity of more than 6.8-million tons of mill-finished steel products. In addition, the company operates 13 scrap recycling facilities and 26 "downstream" processing operations that produce and fabricate finished steel products, mainly for use in construction and industrial markets.
The company recently nearly doubled in size, according to Scardoelli, through a merger of Gerdau's Canadian operations with Co-Steel Operations, which also had mills in Canada and the Northeast.
"That brought along a lot of production, a lot more work," he said. "Personally, I'm facing a way larger operation with a broader scope in terms of the job. It's a big challenge."
Minimills produce steel that uses iron scrap as raw material instead of iron ore, which is used by bigger steel mills, Scardoelli explained. "Instead of having one large mill that uses iron ore, we have 10 mills that use recycled scrap available in that region."
Minimills have emerged in recent decades, he said, as a more practical alternative to the larger, integrated mills. Today, about half of all mills are minimills, Scardoelli said.
Another distinction, he said, is that the larger mills tend to produce large pieces of steel, often in plate form used for such products as automobiles, refrigerators and stoves. Minimills produce long sheets of product that are basically used as reinforcing steel for construction. "That's our forte," he said. "We also have a lot of downstream operations which get the raw bars out of the minimills and cut them to length and bend and deliver them to construction sites."
Scardoelli earned a civil engineering degree in 1985 from Federal University in southern Brazil, and a second degree, in business administration, from Catholic University, also in southern Brazil, in 1988. Why two degrees?
"I wanted to open (up) my opportunities, I guess," he said. "I wanted to go from the technical to a broad management role. I was trying to work for a large corporation, and Gerdau was pretty large at that time and growing, so when the opportunity came up, I grabbed it."
The cultural adjustments, first to living and working in Winnipeg, Canada, and then Florida, have evolved with the job, Scardoelli said. While the winters in Winnipeg were difficult, he said, the Florida climate is close to what he grew up with in Brazil.
Scardoelli said he enjoys the steel industry, in part, because of the emphasis on using recycled scrap materials. "You feel like you're contributing to the environment," he said, "not continually using new resources.
"It's a challenging industry," he added. "There's a lot of competition."
Scardoelli, 40, lives in Tampa. He and his wife, Lisiane, have two children: a 6-year-old son, Felipe, born in Canada, and a daughter, Isabella, born 18 months ago in the United States.
An avid chess player, Scardoelli said he likes to watch tournaments at the St. Petersburg Chess Club, as time permits.
