Market Segment
January 27, 2026
Millett blasts BlueScope board, says SDI and SGH remain best fit
Written by Michael Cowden
Steel Dynamics Inc.’s (SDI’s) top executive said the company remains interested in acquiring the North American assets of Australian steelmaker BlueScope.
And he expressed frustration that BlueScope’s board had rejected what the Fort Wayne, Ind.-based steelmaker thought was a fair price.
“The premise for the board’s rejection was insufficient value. Yet they provided shareholders with no reasonable, executable alternative strategy that would provide the same certainty of shareholder return,” SDI Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Mark Millett said.
Millett added that he found a subsequent lack of engagement from BlueScope, Australia’s largest steelmaker, to be “very disappointing.”
He made the comments during SDI’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call on Monday.
Not the only suitor?
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reports BlueScope has entered talks with South Korean steelmaker POSCO and Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel. The goal: “to flush out a rival offer,” AFR reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Note that both POSCO and Nippon have also been expanding in the US. Nippon Steel purchased Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel for nearly $15 billion and has pledged to invest an additional $11 billion in its operations.
POSCO has a 20% stake in an EAF sheet mill that Hyundai, another South Korean industrial powerhouse, plans to build in Louisiana. In addition, POSCO has been in talks with Cleveland-Cliffs about a potential deal. But details of any such detail have not been made public.
Recall that SDI and Australian conglomerate SGH made a nearly $9 billion, all-cash bid to buy BlueScope. The deal would have seen SGH acquire BlueScope’s assets in Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.
SDI would have taken its North American assets. Those include not only North Star BlueScope – a well-regarded EAF sheet mill near Toledo, Ohio – but also an array of downstream businesses.
It marked SDI’s fourth bid for BlueScope. But the board of the Australian steelmaker dismissed it on grounds that it “very significantly undervalued BlueScope.”
Millett warns that rejecting SDI comes with risks
Millett on Monday detailed the reasons why he thinks BlueScope’s rejection of SDI’s offer could be a risky move for the Australian company.
He pointed to North Star BlueScope as an example. The mill makes hot-rolled coil but does not have cold-rolling or coating capacity. Millett argued that the lack of value-added operations could become a liability, especially with a wave of new hot-rolled capacity coming into the US market.
What’s more, Millett contended that North Star BlueScope’s Midwest location puts it at a “structural disadvantage” to supply its parent company’s “geographically disparate” coil coating operations. Those operations include metal painter Coil Coating, which BlueScope acquired for $500 million in 2022, as well was West Coast subsidiary Steelscape.
“The steel mill is essentially a stranded asset.” And the coating businesses are at a “structural disadvantage,” Millett said.
Adding new cold-rolling and coating capabilities could cost more than $1 billion. And that’s not to mention “the years of waiting on equipment and the construction risks,” he added.
Millett stressed, however, that SDI has strong working relationships not only with senior leadership at BlueScope’s North American operations but also with its workers. And the company has in the past made “substantial” purchases of steel made at North Star BlueScope.
“The BlueScope North American asset teams and senior leadership are not the problem,” he said. Instead Millett blasted what he alleged were its parent company’s “conservative, incomplete growth strategies.”
One case in point, according to Millet, is BlueScope’s shelving of plans to build a $1.2 billion metal coating facility in the US.
