ProTrade Steel Company - A Leader in Scrap Brokerage

Customer relationships are the true strength of the firm, as all of its traders have extensive experience and industry contacts.

PROTRADE STEEL CO. was founded in 1994 as a ferrous scrap brokerage company by Jack Kessick who was later joined by several former executives of leading domestic scrap firms.

The firm has grown steadily over the years. In 2005, ProTrade traded a volume of over one million tons with over $250 million in revenue. The firm projects that sales will continue to rise as it expands.

ProTrade maintains a strong trading presence across the country from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. Customer relationships are the firm's true strength; all of our traders have extensive experience and industry contacts. ProTrade's six executives each have over 30 years of experience in scrap trading, management, transportation, finance, and international commerce. Several of our traders have been granted exclusive agency buying responsibilities, acting on behalf of their agency customers to purchase millions of tons of scrap for various mini-mills.

The firm's headquarters are in Hudson, Ohio. Currently, the brokerage division has five trading offices. In today's active markets, ProTrade sells to 70 customers and purchases scrap from 180 dealers, industrial sources, and mill sources each month.

PROTRADE STEEL'S international connections allow us to source scrap and alternatives (Pig Iron and DRI) from overseas markets when the economics dictate.

The company operates processing facilities in Toledo, Ohio and three processing yards in West Virginia. In addition to the scrap we handle for our agency customers, we control over 200,000 tons of processed and industrial scrap annually.

ProTrade expanded into the electronics recycling field by starting American Electronics Recycling, LLC in Bradenton, Florida in 2004. AER moved to Sarasota, Florida in 2006 and now operates a state of the art electronics shredder.

ProTrade has accumulated a fleet of open-top equipment that now exceeds 450 cars. This gives the company a strong relationship with the serving railroads for both private and system fleet rates, in addition to compensating for the ever-shrinking system car availability.