Service Centers

Olympic Steel Buys Arkansas-Based Central Tube & Bar

Written by Ethan Bernard

October 2, 2023

Olympic Steel has acquired Conway, Ark.-based Central Tube & Bar (CTB).

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, the Cleveland-based national service center said the “all-cash purchase is expected to be immediately accretive.”

CTB’s trailing 12-month revenue for the period ended Aug. 31 was ~$40 million, according to Olympic.

The company will operate as Central Tube & Bar, an Olympic Steel Co. It will continue to be led by CTB president Dustin Ward and his management team.

“The addition of CTB into our tubular and pipe products segment, combined with the existing success of our Chicago Tube & Iron business, provides great opportunities for growth and synergies.” Andrew Greiff, Olympic president and COO, said in a statement on Monday.

CTB serves OEMs and fabricators across the mid-South region from three facilities in Conway and Tulsa, Okla. They total 162,000 square feet of warehouse and production space.

CTB, founded in 1996, offers value-added fabrication services, including tube laser cutting, tube bending, robotic welding, flat laser burning, and brake press forming.

The company services the transportation, agricultural, commercial furniture, and data center construction industries, the statement said. CTB supplies these with fabricated tube and bar products, including round, square, rectangular, and special-shaped tubes.

“Olympic Steel’s tubular and pipe products segment has historically been our highest ebitda-to-sales margin segment, and CTB’s historical financial performance has consistently exceeded our tubular and pipe products returns,” Richard Marabito, Olympic’s CEO, said.

Ethan Bernard

Ethan Bernard is managing editor for Steel Market Update. He previously worked for American Metal Market as a copy editor in the New York office for two years, starting in 2008. Later, he copy edited AMM’s monthly magazine on a freelance basis from 2015 until 2017. With experience in financial copywriting and textbook publishing, he holds a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, and an MFA. in Creative Writing from New York University. He can be reached at ethan@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7871.

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