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Best Practice Library

Welcome to the MetalMiner metal buying best practice library. At MetalMiner, our mission is two-fold. One, to educate you, the buyer, on important market trends, drivers, and price movements for the metals we cover: Steel (HRC, CRC, HDG, Plate), Aluminum, Tin, Copper, Nickel, Zinc, and Lead. Two, to provide guidance on what to do about those trends: set strategy, reduce volatility, lower average purchase prices, and share tactics and strategies to negotiate your metal buy effectively.

Below, you’ll see various pieces in a series of new content we’ve created. Each paper features tips and tricks to help you source industrial metals at the best price. Whether it’s preparing for a spike in steel prices, recognizing the ways service centers and mills will try to hose you on purchases, knowing the pieces of data every executive team wants to see from procurement, or perfecting the art of timing your buy, MetalMiner is here to help you.

Ultimately, we want to help you negotiate with confidence, strategically source any metal you need to buy, plan your annual budget with ease, lower average costs by better timing your metal buys, and be able to report all of the hard work you’re doing (and the impact of metal market volatility) back to leadership teams in a meaningful way.

Click through each download below to learn more. Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions or suggestions on what you would like to see next. We’re always here to talk metal and love your input.

Should-Cost Models: The Ultimate Savings Hack

You’re charged with new savings targets year-over-year, and may feel tapped out on the same old negotiation dance with incumbent suppliers. Enter granular should-cost models, which can be the ideal mechanism to quickly identify savings opportunities, providing bottom line impact that can be identified and implemented fast.

What Every Executive Team Wants from Procurement

One of the key parts of your job is to communicate commodity volatility with your executive team so they have the information they need to make critical decisions.

Steel Price Spikes

Don't be fooled by a falling market: steel price spikes are coming. Double digit price increases can be mitigated if you have the essential information to negotiate with.

Download this quick-hit strategy sheet to learn exactly what you need, when, and why.

Five Ways Centers Hose You on Purchases

What are the common ways that metal service centers and mills are taking advantage of you?

Best Practice Metal Sourcing Strategies

We at MetalMiner have seen the purchasing data from hundreds of companies and conducted dozens of sourcing projects for manufacturing organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Metal Price Contracting Indexes

Platts, AMM HRC, scrap cap/collars—the indexes may all sound like alphabet soup, and there is no shortage of mechanisms buying organizations can use for contracting.

The Art of Timing Your Metal Buy

Some may argue that timing your buys is speculative. But we'd argue that buying without a strategy is much scarier. Metal buyers, at a baseline, should understand why price trends are more important than specific price points, why technical analysis is vastly superior to fundamental analysis, and connecting their buying strategy to both. Walk through how to behave in falling, sideways, and rising markets - and save by timing your buy.