Good day, and welcome to this Steel Dynamics Conference Call regarding its newly announced investment in a new state-of-the-art low-carbon aluminum flat-rolled mill. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. Please be advised this call is being recorded today, July 19th, 2022 , and your participation implies consent to our recording this call. If you do not agree to these terms, please disconnect. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to David Lipschitz, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Holly. Good morning, and welcome to Steel Dynamics Aluminum Flat Roll Mill Strategic Investment Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website for replay later today. There's also an investor presentation on our website for reference during today's call. Some of today's statements, which speak only as of this date, may be forward-looking and predictive, typically preceded by believe, expect, anticipate, or words of similar meaning. They are intended to be protected by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 should actual results turn out differently. Such statements involve risk and uncertainties related to integrating or starting up new assets, the aluminum industry, the use of estimates and assumptions in connection with anticipated project returns, and our steel, metals recycling, and fabrication businesses, as well as to general business and economic conditions.
Examples of these are described in the related press release, investor presentation, as well as in our annually filed SEC Form 10-K under the headings Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors, found on the Internet at www.sec.gov, and if applicable, in any later SEC Form 10-Q. Please reference the investor presentation and press release issued this morning entitled Steel Dynamics Announces Investment in New State-of-the-Art Low-Carbon Aluminum Flat Roll Mill Aligned With Its Core Steelmaking and Recycling Platforms for any financial information and reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Now I'm pleased to turn the call over to Mark Millett, Steel Dynamics Chief Executive Officer.
Mark, your line is live in the conference.
Okay. I'm gonna start over. Sorry, you may not have heard that. I'm accompanied today with Theresa Wagler, our CFO, along with David Rosenblum . David has been with OmniSource, our recycling platform, for some 46 years, heading up our aluminum recycling activities. He's a global presence, globally recognized in that space. Along with Glenn Pushis. Glenn is SVP with SDI. Has been with us, even predates our SDI experience back in Nucor. But most recently, headed up the Sinton construction and startup, which was an absolutely incredible feat. He will be heading up our aluminum initiative going forward.
I also have a few folks in the room too listening in that were very sort of influential in our due diligence and coming up with the investment premise and the project and put a lot of work in. Again, incredibly exciting day for us, I do believe. We're announcing our plans to build a new aluminum facility. It broadens our ability to serve our existing and new customers by adding a high-quality low-carbon flat-rolled aluminum mill to our product portfolio. Aluminum sheet actually has been on our radar for many years, and the significant and growing North American supply deficit in aluminum flat-rolled makes this an ideal time to penetrate the market. I believe it's low risk.
It's a margin-enhancing opportunity that further diversifies our product portfolio and provides further mitigation of market cycles. I think it should be considered as an adjacent business to our highly successful steel operations with considerable overlap in process and operational know-how, commercial approach, and raw material supply. It leverages our core strengths that has driven our success and our growth over the last 25 years. You know, we have a phenomenal design, procurement, construction team, as I said, most recently led by Glenn down in Sinton. You know, our teams have constructed three very large steel mill assets and probably 14, 15 coating lines.
Just a plethora of experience, fast-tracking projects, turning very quality mills and being able to start them up in very short order. We have a vast technical and operational expertise in melting, casting, rolling, heat treating, and coating. That is only added by the Unity team. They are a very talented bunch of folks that have a vast experience, deep, practical, pragmatic experience in the aluminum business. It's gonna be driven by our performance culture, our performance-driven culture that drives our superior efficiency and low cost, and it eliminates the cost and inefficiencies of legacy costs, expense and the inefficiencies of aging mills in the aluminum industry. I guess you could just sum it up by saying it's just what we do.
We build high return capital assets that melt, cast, and roll, and then operate them better than anyone else. It also capitalizes on our deep understanding of raw materials, and we have a wide recycling network within the Omni organization. It's complementary extension of our metals recycling platform, and obviously is facilitated with our recent acquisitions and growth in Mexico. I think also we have proven over the years to be able to develop and create value add supply chain solutions for our customers, and this is just a further extension of that. The project scope itself, as you saw or read, is 650,000 metric tons per year. It's a flat-rolled facility. It will be built in the southeastern U.S.
It will consist of on-site melt and slab cast capability of 450,000 metric tons, which will directly supply the rolling mill, cold rolling mills. We'll have two casting lines, coating lines, and downstream processing and packaging operations. Obviously, it's gonna be state-of-the-art technology and process. Additional slab supply will be provided by two satellite downstream slab casting centers, one located in north central Mexico and one in the southwestern U.S. We expect the flat roll mill to start up in the first half of 2025, the Mexico slab center in 2024, and the southwest slab center by the end of 2025. Total project cost expected to be $2.2 billion for all three facilities. The investment will be 100% funded with available cash and cash flow from operations.
Our expectation is that it will add about $650 million-$700 million of through cycle consolidated annual EBITDA. It's gonna offer a diversified product mix serving the sustainable beverage packaging, automotive and transportation, and common alloy industrial markets. Beverage can will be roughly 45%, automotive around 35%, and common alloy, 20% of shipments. It's always been a key pillar of SDI to have a customer commitment, and we've always desired to create innovative value supply chain solutions. I believe there's a clear need for additional supply options, and it's been communicated by our current customer base who either distribute or consume both steel and aluminum.
Just given the response in the last hour since our press release, the excitement is incredible, and we already have one customer wanting to plant a flag on our campus, wherever that might be. The exciting thing for us is that there's a current and growing supply deficit driven by the beverage can and principally by the beverage can and automobile industries. Automobiles seems to be constrained by a lack of secure supply for its EV development. Instead of ignoring that issue, we're embracing the change. We'll fill these needs while creating a natural hedge to steel substitution. The beverage can industry itself has been undergoing significant expansion and requires feedstock, and it's amazing to me that industry today actually imports cans.
You only get 2 tons of cans in a container today. Obviously, that's unsustainable. There's a massive need for can stock, and we will help supply that. Similar to our Sinton facility, we will be inviting customers to co-locate on our campus. That brings tremendous savings, freight savings, yield savings. Allows sort of a closed loop recycle of scrap to the facility. Reduces the carbon footprint, and we believe that's gonna be an exciting new thing for those customers. The project itself is gonna benefit from our leading ESG profile. ESG is not a new thing for us. It's been in the fabric of our company since our inception. Our production will focus on high recycled content to minimize carbon footprint and anticipate over 80% recycled content for can stock.
Obviously, lower but meaningful for recycled content for automotive. We'll be best in class as we successfully develop new segregation technologies for scrap and increase that content over the years. The recycled aluminum requirements will be supplied through SDI's recycling platform, OmniSource, which is the largest nonferrous metals recycler in North America today. State-of-the-art technologies within the mill itself will provide superior energy efficiency and lower environmental impact. The slab centers will further reduce transportation emissions while providing significant freight cost advantage. These satellite centers are gonna be located where there's an abundant scrap supply today. By producing slab and transporting that slab to the mill, obviously, creates a huge freight advantage. As I said, reduces the emission, the transportation emissions.
It's gonna aid our customers' path to minimize their own carbon footprint. From a shareholder perspective, I'm a large shareholder, so I take importance in this. I believe it builds on our proven track record to deliver best-in-class shareholder value creation. It's a large scale, low risk growth initiative, and an extremely effective use of growth capital. It avoids the growth through excessive transactional multiples that are prevailing in the market today. Obviously, there are many opportunities to grow, but the valuations are incredibly high. We've always had a very disciplined approach to our growth. We feel that this project is, you know, in the best interest, huge growth at a low multiple.
Project cash needs will be spread over four years, so there's not a massive one-shot. That will allow our strong balance sheet to maintain. When you consider the doubling of our cash flow generation over the past five years, plus the new addition of Sinton, we'll have sufficient liquidity to continue our balanced cash allocation strategy. We'll still invest heavily in our existing operations. We'll maintain our positive dividend profile and our share repurchase programs. I think it's gonna be great for us as a whole. Theresa, any thoughts? Any further comments?
Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I know it's an incredibly busy time for you with earnings, and we appreciate it. You know, the anticipated financial returns for the project are incredibly compelling, and we believe, as Mark said, that the execution risk actually is low. The estimated total investment of $2.2 billion includes the aluminum flat roll mill and the two satellite recycled aluminum slab centers. Given our strong through-cycle cash flow generation, the investment will readily be funded with available cash and cash flow from operations. The project provides us with additional value-added margin-enhancing product diversification in a growing demand deficit supply environment.
As Mark said, we expect the project to generate between $650 million and $700 million of annual through-cycle EBITDA, which results in an IRR in the high teens and a payback period of five years. Not included in that EBITDA amount is additional earnings that we believe we can achieve at our mills recycling platform in the range of $40 million as they grow their aluminum scrap business and processing capabilities. The $2.2 billion investment is laddered over four years, with the majority, around $1.6 billion, to be funded in 2023 and 2024. The rolling mill is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2025, and we believe it will be additive to earnings in that first year.
As we were with Sinton, we're in a position of strength, beginning the investment with a strong balance sheet, low leverage, and strong liquidity. The investment complements our low-cost position and robust through-cycle cash-generating business model. Our cash flow profile has fundamentally changed over the last five years. The acquisitions and subsequent transformations of Columbus, Heartland, and United Steel Supply, combined with the completion of our new state-of-the-art Texas steel mill and added finishing lines, have added significant free cash flow generation capabilities and scale to our business. Given our differentiated operating and financial model, we also expect to generate significant counter-cyclical cash flow in the event of an economic downturn, as significant working capital relief would offset lower earnings. We are committed to funding this strategic growth investment in a manner consistent with our investment-grade credit profile. We will continue to maintain strong shareholder distributions.
During Sinton's investment phase, which was around 2019 to 2021, we both improved our credit metrics, and we increased our shareholder distributions. We increased our dividends 39% and repurchased $1.5 billion or 14% of our shares during that same three-year period. We are unique. We have strategically placed ourselves in a position to have a substantial capital foundation that provides the opportunity for strategic growth, strong shareholder returns, and investment-grade credit metrics. This really is an incredibly exciting opportunity for the company, for our teams, our customers, and for our shareholders. Mark?
Super. Thank you, Theresa. I guess just to wrap up, it's a project that, for me, it's incredibly exciting. It takes me back to, in all honesty, the inception of SDI, some 27 years ago. It's certainly totally aligned with our current business, our current business model. It's consistent with our overall strategic focus over the years. You know, it provides cyclical mitigation through value-add product diversification, higher highs, higher lows in earnings profile. It's a higher margin value add earnings growth of scale. It's gonna allow us to continue superior best-in-class financial metrics within the industry. Most importantly, it will continue to allow us to provide the highest shareholder value creation of any of our peers.
Incredibly excited by the opportunity to once again revolutionize an industry. We did it before with steel, and here we're gonna do it again with the aluminum. With that, Holly, or Holly, sorry, I'd like to hand it over to you to coordinate the questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing the star key followed by the digit one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you pressed star one earlier during today's call, please press star one again to ensure your equipment has been captured. Also, we ask that you please limit yourselves to one question to facilitate time for everyone. Any additional questions can be addressed upon reentering the queue. Please hold while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is coming from Emily Chieng with Goldman Sachs. Emily, your line is live.
Good morning, Mark and Theresa, and thank you for the update this morning. My question is just around the $650 million-$700 million through-cycle EBITDA estimate. It looks like it might be a little bit higher than what some of your peers are currently generating. The question would be, you know, what are the differences between what you are proposing versus what the existing downstream alloy processes are offering? Perhaps, you know, maybe talk about some of the synergies and cost savings and then the pricing construct that are baked into that estimate there.
Certainly. Well, obviously, this is gonna be a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility. There hasn't been one built in the aluminum industry for over 40 years. With that comes an optimized plant layout whereby you have tremendous efficiencies in logistics, material handling, reduces the labor input for sure. There'll be lower energy input. Obviously, it'll be state-of-the-art heating systems and a much lower energy profile, which in turn leads to obviously a much lower carbon footprint for sure. There's a huge yield loss through the aluminum process as sort of production. We will be utilizing technologies there to lower that yield loss.
I think first and foremost, to be honest, is our performance-driven culture. We have absolutely demonstrated, year-over-year in every business that we've penetrated, that our culture, having an employee base that is engaged, passionate, innovative, creative, coming up with solutions, drives efficiency. It drives a low-cost position. Now, that will drive significant difference between us and our competitors. Obviously, we won't have any sort of legacy costs or the inefficiencies driven by the more or the older aged facilities that are out there. We believe we can, through our OmniSource recycling platform and some creativity, increase the scrap content of all the grades.
The satellite slab casters themselves by taking scrap, turning it into slab and transporting that slab to the mill will reduce freight costs considerably, and again, lower the carbon footprint. It is a very differentiated model, and we believe it's gonna easily drive a difference in sort of a EBITDA per pound or per ton, and drive our performance.
Emily, I would just add that we believe we've actually been fairly conservative with the estimate that we've provided, simply because as we looked at the spreads within the aluminum industry, we actually looked historically rather than looking forward for those estimates. If you look at the forward forecast, there would be expanding margins, and we didn't want to do that. We actually looked historically. We believe that that's conservative, so we think there's upside to what we've provided as well.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question is coming from Timna Tanners with Wolfe Research. Timna, your line is live.
Good morning, guys.
Good morning.
Follow-up question, a little bit more on the aluminum side. When you talk about the market remaining in deficit even with your production, does that include both the Novelis and the Ball plant that are being contemplated? When you talk about payback schedule, does that assume that your automotive tons are qualified in year one? Or can you talk to us a little bit more about the cadence of kind of a ramp-up in profitability given usually a delay there and a ramp-up in you know, optimization of the plant? Thanks.
Thank you, Timna. Firstly, yes, it does consider the Novelis expansion, which is highly probable, and then the other major expansion. I think what excites me is the fact this is probably the first time we've ever entered a market that is undersubscribed. So to have all our sort of differentiated attributes to get into this business in a very effective low-cost position and also have a supply deficit that we can exploit is tremendously exciting for us.
From the perspective of the ramp up, it's for the payback period, Timna, as I mentioned, the mill, the aluminum rolling mill should start in the first quarter of 2025. We do expect to be profitable in that year, from an EBITDA perspective and a pre-tax earnings perspective. It's likely to be around 50%-60% of the capability then getting to an optimal mix by 2027. That ramp period is, we think, fairly conservative.
Okay, thanks. If I could sneak in a follow-up. For the amount that you're spending for a greenfield, we look at the existing players, and we wonder, if you know, an existing player, given these valuations, would not have been also comparably interesting. Can you comment on that a bit as well. I know you talked about alternatives for cash and how you're gonna continue to deploy for existing steel operations, but just wondering when you looked at the investment opportunities within aluminum, why you thought greenfield was the best solution. Thanks.
Well, greenfield, Timna, allows us to introduce our operating culture, that incentive, performance-driven culture of ours that, as I said earlier, clearly has demonstrated an ability to have greater efficiency and lower cost. In any of these metals businesses, it's absolutely important to be the low-cost producer. Buying in an established organization, company, unfortunately, you're saddled with aged facilities, with legacy costs, and a culture that we'd prefer, we just prefer to have our own.
In addition to that we're, as Mark mentioned earlier, avoiding the high multiple environment. You know, when you have companies transacting at mid-teen multiples on peak earnings or on very high earnings, it just doesn't make sense to us from a capital allocation perspective. This is much more efficient and effective.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Best of luck.
Thanks.
Your next question for today is coming from Alex Hacking with Citi. Alex, your line is live.
Hi, Mark and Theresa. Thanks for the call, and congrats on the announcement. I just wanted to ask on the raw material side, you know, you mentioned that it's gonna require 900,000 tons of recycled slabs. Do you have an estimate of how much primary material would be in there? Then, you know, I guess following up a little bit on Timna's question, you know, there's another 600,000-ton facility that's gonna be ramping up at a similar time. Are you concerned about increased competition for recycled aluminum in the U.S. market? Thanks.
Thank you. Well, obviously, having the OmniSource platform is incredibly constructive for us, as it has been in steel on the ferrous side of business. OmniSource today is the largest nonferrous recycler in the States. We handle around about 500 million lbs of aluminum scrap today. Again, we have tremendous relationships with the industrial generators. We have scrap management programs. We are well armed already with a base supply and the ability to grow that. From a standpoint of tons of primary, we'll probably be around 300,000 tons a month.
225.
Sorry, 225,000 tons of primary.
Okay, thanks for the question, and best of luck. I'll rejoin the queue.
Well, if I may, just a couple other thoughts, though. Again, this is where this business aligns itself well to our current business. You know, in the ferrous world, there are similar concerns about scrap supply. As I've said constantly, it's amazing how creativity, innovation, and capitalism drives change and transition. There's a vast amount of secondary scrap out there where there are technologies being developed, and we will develop those technologies to segregate out the, you know, the cast from the extruded from the raw. We feel that unto itself is gonna drive a very large quantity of sort of scrap quality appropriate material for the mill.
Obviously you have a growing sense of closed loop manufacturing, where you supply coil to the canner or the can producer or to the automotive producer. They in turn, you know, produce and thereafter generate scrap that gets returned to the mill. We are very confident given our position that scrap supply for us is not gonna be a problem.
Your next question for today is coming from Seth Rosenfeld with BNP. Seth, your line is live.
Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions today. I've got a question on the implications for shareholder returns please, and buybacks. How should we think about your capacity to execute buybacks in the coming years relative to earnings or free cash flow? I think in the past, you've talked about STLD's balance sheet contributing to underlevered, well below that max 2.0 x. But with earnings likely to decline, perhaps cyclically from recent peaks, by way of elevated CapEx on the horizon, how should we think about your willingness to potentially relever going forward or utilize the vast majority of free cash flow for shareholder returns? Thank you.
Thanks, Seth. It's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. From a shareholder return perspective, we wanna be very clear on the call. We do plan to continue to execute the strong shareholder returns that we've had. On a through-the-cycle basis, we actually target around 35% of our net income, but you'll notice that we've had shareholder distributions closer to 60%-65% over the last three to five years. We would expect to continue that pace, and there's a couple of reasons. To your point, our balance sheet has been somewhat underlevered, and as we look forward to the cash flow generation through both earnings, and if there was a weaker period, it would come through a significant amount of working capital relief.
We reach a point where unless we do shareholder distributions of a significant amount, you know, you could be in a net debt leverage, a negative net debt leverage position, which isn't where we plan to be. We have the capability over this period as we're building the new rolling mill to actually have same and similar strong shareholder returns. That's our plan.
Thank you. Just to clarify, that would be a continuation of a 60%+ earnings payout.
Seth, I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.
Sorry, just to confirm, there would be continuation of 60% or higher net income payout?
No, I wasn't being that specific. I said we'd continue to have strong payouts. We've had them in the range of 50, 60, 65. It'll be at any point in time what feels reasonable. I'm not committing to a specific number. But what I'm saying is that we're gonna continue to have these strong shareholder distributions that we've had.
Understood. Thank you.
Your next question is coming from David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets. David, your line is live.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. A lot of them have already been covered. I just wanted to drill down a bit more on the, you know, on the projection, the $650 million-$700 million. You know, if we look at, you know, the published, public numbers for some of the peers, you know, typically packaging is kind of $250 a ton, EBITDA margin and, you know, that sort of thing. Auto is, call it $500. If you blend it, you know, it's maybe $400 a ton or something like that. You know, again, it's over $1,000 in terms of the projection.
I'm wondering if you could break down the cost savings, you know, how much is it all cost and, you know, in which buckets, if it's possible to break it down to help close some of that gap. That's my first question. The second part of the question is just, you know, the why now question. You mentioned the prior March had Hydro on, you know, aluminum rolling for a long time. I get it. There's a lot of cash right now. There's a lot of opportunities out there to deploy that capital. You know, world is slowing and, you know, heading into perhaps, you know, a more challenging time.
as mentioned on this call, there is you know quite a few other you know aluminum rolling facilities being built. I'm wondering you know why such a major capital investment at this stage in the cycle? Thanks.
Super. Well, I'm not gonna get into a dollar by dollar, pound per pound analysis. The key differentiators, and they are massive, I can assure you. If you just compare the number of employees at an equivalent plant compared to this, we're probably gonna have half the number of employees. Labor is a massive impact. Legacy cost, massive impact. Energy, considerable impact. Yield, considerable impact. Scrap content, in our synergy, sort of synergistic relationship with OmniSource, large impact. Then transportation is gonna be a considerable impact as well. I'd say those are the main buckets. We are confident that the savings, the cost profile that we have planned or projected in our performance are conservative.
I would add on the expansion. You know, Dave, as we look at it, there's a growing consumption of flat-rolled aluminum, and over the next five years, it's going to grow considerably. There's already a gap, okay? As we look at it, even with the Novelis and the potential Ball expansions, there's still gonna be well over 2 million tons of supply deficit in North America for flat-rolled aluminum. Coupled with the fact that it's kind of shown today because last year imports of flat-rolled aluminum was around 25%, and that has high cost tariffs associated with it. It shows that there's a real need in North America, and it's a growing need. It's not a shrinking need.
It makes sense for there to be more capacity in the U.S., and we feel like we can bring it very cost-effectively. Again, it's already, I don't know, two-thirds of our customers, half of our customers already are consumers and processors of aluminum, and we're the largest nonferrous recycler in North America. We've got the customer base. We have the raw materials. This just makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. I would echo that. Again, as I said earlier, it's incredibly exciting for us to get into a market that is underserved. It's, I believe, the first time we've ever done it. And that deficit is current and growing, going forward. There's, in my mind, a total sort of business alignment, both from a business perspective, business model perspective and from a construct, build, operate commercial perspective. This allows us a high margin value-added growth at scale. It eliminates the need or the. Well, let me just say.
You've heard me say before, we grow very intentionally in a very disciplined manner, and that there are multiple opportunities out there for growth alternatives, but at valuations that are extreme and in all honesty, crazy. This allows us, you know, we'll be spending $2.2 billion through-cycle EBITDA generation $650-$700. That is an incredibly effective, efficient form use of our cash. I think if you were to just analyze our growth over the years, we have the lowest cost of growth than any of our peers. This is just another example.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question is coming from Carlos de Alba with Morgan Stanley. Carlos, your line is live.
Yeah. Good morning, Mark and Theresa. Just on in terms of the satellite recycling operations, I just wonder if you can elaborate a little bit more as to what, maybe other than the supply of scrap led you to pursue this strategy. Presumably it might be cheaper, you know, the closer your recycling facilities are. You can elaborate a little bit more about the rationale for that decision as well as a little bit of the logistics and the cost to bring or transport the scrap into the rolling mill facility.
Sorry, Carlos. I only got part of that.
It's just regarding the strategy that you decided to have with the two satellite recycling facilities, as opposed to maybe have everything in the rolling mill. Presumably, that is, you know, part of the supply of scrap, but that might come also with higher costs. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on the rationale and the cost implications, the logistic implications of having the two satellite facilities together with the rolling mill.
Got it. Okay. Sorry about that. I got it the second time. Well, I think that it makes phenomenal strategic sense to have our two slab centers. As I said, we'll have roughly 450,000 tons of slab capability at the mill itself. The other sort of 500,000 tons or so in the Southwest and in Mexico. The Southwest is got a prolific generation of UBC content, and we feel it would be good to capture that, have a captive local supply there.
If you can imagine aluminum, incredibly light, and the transportation cost of transporting scrap across the country versus very solid, dense slab, there's a tremendous freight savings there. We capture the scrap at its source. We effectively turn it into slab, and then very effectively, at a low cost, transport that to the mill itself. Same thing in Mexico. Mexico has a strong UBC generation along with industrial scrap. We believe that's gonna grow even further as Mexico expands. As you're aware, we purchased Zimmer, a large recycler in Monterrey, Mexico, about a year ago.
We are in the throes of completing the acquisition of ROCA. We're gonna have a very strong recycling presence in Mexico also. Just to make sure that people comprehend, even though there are 900,000 tons of scrap, that doesn't mean to say we're looking for 900,000 tons of scrap. Given the yield lost through the aluminum process, there's a lot of scrap circulating in a loop, so to speak.
Understood. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Your next question for today is coming from Philip Gibbs with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Philip, your line is live.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
Hey, given you'll be a new entrant in aluminum rolled products, how long do you think it will take to get qualified in automotive and packaging applications, respectively, across your targeted accounts?
Well, we would envision that obviously common alloy industrial would be the quickest. We believe beverage will be parallel that. Automotive, it's interesting over the years, you know, people have experienced long sort of certification periods. While when there's an absolute need, those periods contract dramatically. Conversations with our existing automotive customers, I do believe they will fast track our product through. I would expect to have sort of unexposed structural aluminum products going into the automotive world probably within our first year, followed by you know the higher qualities in the second and third years.
On the auto side, you'll be targeting unexposed and exposed, Mark?
Well, again, that's a natural sort of evolution, Phil. Again, I gotta emphasize, this is different than the electric arc furnace penetration of automotive. 'Cause there we were introducing a different technology, you know, thin slab casting, CSP production. Here, we're putting in state-of-the-art proven technologies. It's not a matter of, okay, we gotta prove the technology and develop it. It's already there. It's just a question of moving materials through the system, pathing it, and getting it approved.
Mark, you've been a company that has been very flexible in terms of pricing with your customers on spot and then rolling index contracts. Is this presumably gonna be a little bit different in terms of the way that you commercially come to market knowing that historically auto and packaging have been multi-year contract markets? Or are you gonna try to disrupt that dynamic as well?
Well, the great question, Phil. It's a very, very different commercial proposition. Obviously, in the past, the mini mill industry, you know, EAF-based industry, ourselves included, given the volatility of ferrous scrap and the lack of indexing, wouldn't allow you, or it wouldn't be prudent to do long-term contract pricing. In the aluminum world, it tends to be priced off an index. In all honesty, the raw material volatility in this sector is a lot less than, or has a smaller impact than, in the ferrous world. Yeah, we will approach it differently, and we will approach it from the standpoint of, you know, maximizing our margin, for sure.
Thank you very much. Good luck.
Thank you.
Your next question is coming from Curt Woodworth with Credit Suisse. Curt, your line is live.
Great. Thanks, and congrats to Mark and Theresa. I just want to follow up on kind of, you know, the margin differential of 1,000 per ton EBITDA. Can you talk about, you know, what sort of commercial arrangements you have in place? Like, how much of your volume would you have under firm contract today? Also, we've seen a lot of volatility in the scrap spread, which is material for margin. Can you just kind of discuss maybe what you're underwriting in terms of scrap spreads going forward?
From a contract perspective, Curt, we don't have any firm contracts for the aluminum flat roll in place today, but we have had numerous conversations with significant customers across the spectrum. Because as I mentioned earlier, you know, two-thirds of our carbon flat roll customers today are also consumers and processors of aluminum. So for them, this is an exciting time because it offers them availability that doesn't exist today because of, you know, the import situation, because there's not enough aluminum flat roll supply in the U.S., and it also allows them to have a relationship that they understand. We do, you know, commercial things that are unique, but part of that uniqueness is serving the customer really well and creating these supply chain solutions. This really is an extension of that.
From the volatility on the scrap side of the equation, you know, given the fact that we are the largest collector and processor of non-ferrous materials today, we believe we have the opportunity, and we've shown it historically, to mute that volatility as much as possible. We're gonna be competitively advantaged to the rest of the aluminum industry who doesn't have the footprint that we have in all of North America that Mark mentioned earlier. We do intend to start processing and having new technologies that will help with the aluminum side of the equation as well, which we think will bring efficiency and it'll allow us to use some aluminum scrap that might not be used today within the aluminum flat-rolled area.
There's a lot of different things functioning where if there's anybody that can have the benefit of muting that volatility and taking advantage of it's us.
Okay, that's helpful. I was wondering if you had the slide showing the deficit in the market of 2.3 million tons in North America. Is it possible for you to break that out between, you know, canned sheet, common alloy, auto, et cetera?
We actually have that. I don't have that at my fingertips today, but it's something that we can show you. The biggest gap is in canned sheet, followed by automotive, but there's expanding deficit gaps within common alloy and the other product sets as well. The largest is definitely in the sustainable beverage can arena.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
You do have a follow-up question coming from Seth Rosenfeld. Seth, your line is live.
Thanks for taking the follow-up. Just one final one with regards to the implications for, steel capacity growth. With this being your first major step outside of steel, how should we interpret this? Is it a call that you view the North American market as now sufficiently supplied, does not require additional upstream domestic capacity? How should we think about additional organic or inorganic growth in steel making as well going forward?
Yeah, because that's not.
Why not investing in steel?
No. The question is, as it relates to growth in steel, did we do aluminum just because there's no opportunity in steel? To the question, the answer is no, but you can unpack that more.
Absolutely not. Obviously, we are strongly founded in our steel experience. We have ongoing growth activities, as you know. You know, we got four coating lines, two galvanizing lines, two paint lines that are under construction. We see continued opportunities in steel. This is not a change in strategy. This is just an alignment or the addition of an adjacent growth platform. It's not one or the other. It's they're gonna go in parallel. We don't necessarily have any immediate plans. This is mill number one and, you know, over the next five years, there's gonna be three more aluminum mills.
We see a very compelling, persuasive investment premise to get into aluminum to give optionality to our customer base and grow into a high-margin, higher-margin material at scale. We will evaluate aluminum just as we evaluate steel going forward, and we'll grow in lockstep with our customer needs in the aluminum space.
I would just add to what Mark said. This wasn't because there's nothing else to do. It's more than just being an adjacency. You know, I think we can't overemphasize. We have the raw material expertise and the raw material base. We have a large component of the customer. We don't have can customers today, but we expect to have them tomorrow. This is really aligned with what we do.
Okay. Thank you very much.
That concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Millett for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you everyone, that is staying with us on the call. Again, for us, incredibly exciting. It's an opportunity to replicate the growth and the sort of revolutionary change that we brought to the steel industry, and it sets us up for many years to come. Thank you. Those that support us, even greater thanks. Have a great day.