UK Metals Expo Q&A: Langley Alloys director Rodney Rice

Langley Alloys director Rodney Rice is heading to this week’s UK Metals Expo with a desire to learn more about the United Kingdom’s renewable energy ambitions.

Rice will be part of an expert panel assembled for MEPS International’s Stainless Steel Market: Exploring Trends and Price Dynamics debate, at the NEC Birmingham event, from 11.30am on September 12. 

In a MEPS Q&A ahead of the Expo, the director of the stainless steels and nickel alloys supplier said that he was keen to learn about future opportunities after 24 months of buoyant trading that “wasn’t expected”. 

“With so much of the UK supply chain involved in the UK Metals Expo, I’ll hopefully be able to have some interesting conversations”, Rice said. 

• MEPS’s presence at UK Metals Expo 2024 will be centred around its stand, B50. Click here to book a free consultation with a market analyst.   

The below Q&A is the last in a series of articles introducing panellists for MEPS’s carbon steel and stainless steel market debates at the UK Metals Expo. Each debate will be hosted by MEPS’s head of price analysis and forecasts, Kaye Ayub.  

How would you describe your 12 months in the steel industry since the UK Metals Expo 2023?  

The last year, and the year before, have been very good for our business. The alloys that we stock and the industries that we are associated with, including oil and gas, have all been very positive. It wasn’t expected and was the result of things happening in the world that couldn’t be controlled, so we don’t know how long it will last. It’s not a time where we’ve had orders fall at our feet, but we’ve done some good business and, at the end of the financial year we’ll have a positive bottom line. 

What have been the major challenges for your business during that period? 

There’s never just one challenge. In terms of the business, recruiting and training new people has been a day-to-day challenge as our levels of activity have gone up. We’ve recruited a number of apprentices from local colleges. Purely from a product availability point-of-view, the challenges have been around the availability of nickel. After the significant uptick in activity, we found that people have sold their stock, sold their incoming material and they’ve been left waiting a further 12 months to replenish in many cases. 

What were the biggest opportunities for your business in the past 12 months? 

Key for Langley Alloys is never allowing ourselves to become complacent. We have to be ready to embrace opportunities. We’ve got some good orders right now but that doesn’t mean we have to stop looking for new business and new territories. We’re investing in our warehouse and storage capacity, new systems, and my sales team have been on the road meeting potential new customers. We probably haven’t fully appreciated how much oil and gas business is out there, as yet, and renewable energy is another promising sector. There’s also been a post-Covid boom in travel, which means there is demand from the aerospace sector. 

The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) was a hot topic at last year’s event. Has your business been affected by this and are you making any preparations for the UK version? 

I’ll be perfectly honest in saying that I was quite ignorant of CBAM and its implications until last year’s UK Metals Expo. At a later event I was told that MEPS had created a webinar on the subject and that really helped us accelerate our understanding and preparations. We’re now fielding a lot of questions and it’s important we can answer them and respond to customers promptly, as we export a lot of material into the EU. Our UK customers who export into the EU will also require the relevant paperwork. It’s a huge administrative burden and you have set yourself up to handle it properly. If you do, it’s really just another stage of data entry in the sales process. Thankfully, the data reaching us from producers is now far more comprehensive than it was when you could still rely entirely on the European Commission’s default emissions values to create reports. As yet, there’s a little uncertainty about how the UK CBAM will play out but, hopefully, it will reflect the EU process. 

Which steel industry ‘hot topic’ are you most keen to hear or learn more about at UK Metals Expo 2024? 

I’m keen to discuss energy policy – exactly how the new UK government’s plans for oil and gas will play out – but I don’t expect that to be a major topic of the Expo. Another thing I’d be keen to hear about is the future of renewable energy in the UK. Wind turbines, particularly offshore projects which demand a lot of steel for their moorings, is another area I’m keen to learn more about. With so much of the UK supply chain involved in the UK Metals Expo, I’ll hopefully be able to have some interesting conversations.