The Difference is Our People

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Ken Pies graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1969 with a major in economics. He was drafted into the army the same year and served in Viet Nam. In 1971 Mr. Pies joined the David Joseph Company’s ferrous scrap brokerage division (the world’s largest scrap trading company) and spent 7 years with that organization. He left David Joseph in 1978 to start a scrap trading division for National Material Corporation.

Over the twenty years he managed National Material Trading it grew to become the 2nd largest scrap brokerage company in the United States. Over that period NMT grew from two persons to about 60 trading and administrative personnel. NMT had eight district offices the United States and Canada plus sales agents in South America and Europe.

For the last 10 years Ken managed NMT, this company purchased 6,000,000 MT’s of scrap, pig iron and HBI / year and was continuously profitable. Most scrap was purchased from and sold to the domestic US market but NMT was also the largest importer of prime scrap and pig iron to the United States and Canada, plus exported 500-700,000 MT’s / year of scrap, primarily to Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

In 1999, Ken started his own company, Consolidated Mill Supply. CMS primarily serves as sales and buying agent to/from North America for several of the world’s largest offshore producers of scrap and scrap alternatives. The companies represented by CMS collectively produce in excess of 10,000,000 tons of scrap, pig iron and HBI per year,

Mark Kaplan graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1997 with a Psychology degree and from College of Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in 2009 with an MBA.

Since joining CMS, Mark has assumed responsibility for managing the day to day operations of the business which include sales, finance, and logistics. In addition, he is responsible for maintaining CMS’ relationships with all of its pig iron suppliers, as well as several of its largest steel mill and foundry accounts.

Adam graduated with a BS in Public Financial Management from Indiana University in 1995 and from DePaul University Kellstadt Graduate School of Business with an MBA in 2000.

Prior to joining CMS in October 2009, Adam was a middle market commercial lending professional having served in audit, underwriting, sales, portfolio management and workout/restructuring roles predominantly at Bank of America, CIT Group and Merrill Lynch.

In addition to being responsible for CMS’ finance, banking, and cash management functions, Adam has created and is responsible for CMS’ credit and inventory management functions.

Michelle started with NMT in 1987 in the billing department.  Over the next 4 years, she received numerous promotions and in 1991 was promoted to Manager, Customer Service. NMT’s Customer Service was its single largest administrative department. In this capacity, Michelle had 20 people directly and indirectly reporting to her. In the 3 years that she managed the department she reduced that number to 10 people while doing greater volume.

In 1994, Michelle became NMT’s first female scrap trader and for 3 years had the largest percentage increase in business of any of its trading personnel.   In October 1997 Michelle took a position with OmniSource, one of the nations largest scrap processors, as head of administration. 

In October 1999, Michelle joined CMS as Vice President of Administration.

Andrew Mass graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1992. Mr. Mass began his career in the steel industry in 1993 working for Hubbell Steel Corp. as a Sales Representative.

He later worked for National Material Trading (NMT) as an account executive/broker. While at NMT, he became one of its top brokers, buying for steel mills and foundries nationwide.

Currently Andy is CMS’ Director of International Development focused on international trade of scrap, scrap alternatives, and bi-products to China and the Far East. CMS sells 400-500,000 MT/year of mill byproducts.