S3E1: All in on Aluminum with Novelis' Beatriz Landa

In today's episode, I’m joined by Beatriz Landa.

As the VP of Metal Procurement and Recycling for Novelis North America, she holds one of the most influential roles in recycled aluminium.

Not only is she a big player in our industry, she also has an MBA and played professional soccer. She's an all round overachiever!

In today’s episode we talk about:

👉 Planned growth & opportunities
👉 New sources of revenue
👉 Partnering for success
👉 Scrap Champions
👉 Landfill mining
👉 And more

Born Scrappy. Brought to you by Buddy.
The only marketplace and trade OS built for scrappies, by scrappies.

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WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?

25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...

I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.

I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don’t produce much metal waste).

I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That’s right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.

Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.

COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/born-scrappy/

Transcript

0:00

Hi, I'm Stu Kagan and welcome to Born Scrappy, the podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders. Join me in conversation with some of the most experienced traders and operators that have helped shape this incredible industry. In today's episode, I chat to Beatrice Lander. Beatrice leads the scrap procurement and planning for Novellis North America. Novellis is an absolute aluminum giant doing over 16 billion. in sales and two billion in EBITDA annually. Bea holds one of the most influential roles in recycled aluminium in North America. Not only is she a big player in our industry, she also played professional soccer in Spain. She's an all round overachiever. In today's episode, we speak about partnering for success, planned growth and opportunities, new sources of revenue, land for mining, Scrap Champions, and so much more. Now let's hear from Bayer, but first, intro. Hey Bea, how are you? Hey Stu, doing good, you? Yeah, awesome, thank you. Welcome to Bourne Scrappy Season 3. I'm honored to be here. Yeah. And, um, we're opening with you. So this is really exciting. We've been talking about it for a while and wanted to open season three with you and Novella. So, um, excited to get going. That's great. I'm excited to go through this conversation. Yeah. So, Bea, let's, let's talk about, I guess, give us a bit of history as well, how you got into the industry. We like to kind of know the background of everybody. So. What got you into recycling? What got you into melting in the metal space? Yeah, it was a very coincidental. So I was many, many moons ago, pro soccer player, lawyer in Spain, decided that wasn't my path, went to get an MBA in the States, ended up working for a strategy consulting company. And. It was a lot of hours and I started interviewing with companies and Novelis had a really good story. And it was all about sustainability and leaving a better planet for our kids. And it immediately tugged on my heartstrings. And I would, I basically decided I want to be part of that story and moved over to Novelis. That was 14 years ago. Look, I want to hear more about the pro soccer player, but I don't know if all the listeners are going to want to go 40 minutes, 45 minutes talking about your professional background, but give me a quick one minute snippet on what were you doing? So I played in Spain for one of the top three professional teams there for probably 10 years, played regional teams. So basically started the more pro women's soccer in Spain. And probably, you know, we were the world cup winners, uh, played with Jenny Hermoso, who you probably know was the lady with the kiss. Um, so it's been an exciting, exciting 10 years and really seeing where it's come to right now is super. It's I cry when they became the world champions. So it's really exciting. And. Yeah. And it was in New Zealand and Australia, the last World Cup. So, I mean, I was there at the time. It was incredible to watch. So yeah, the, the female soccer level is, has become incredible. It's so great to watch. Yeah, we absolutely love it. I actually went to go watch the 2010 soccer World Cup where Spain won in South Africa, the men's. Welcome final Spain against Holland. So, um, I was there in the game with a whole lot of clients from the metal recycling industry as well. So that was exciting. All right. That's football down that soccer down. Let's talk about metal recycling. So in novellus is operation for those that don't know, how much are we talking about recycled metal and what sort of a role does recycled metal play in your business? Yeah. And maybe just to give some stats to. So everybody understands the size of Novella because it's a pretty big company. So, uh, it's, uh, 16 billion in sales, we're about 2 billion in EBITDA. This is about 3, 600 KT of coil being sold. And out of that 63 percent is recycled content. Inputs, right? So we're talking about probably 2 million tons of input and we are the largest recycler of UBCs in the world. So we recycle about 82 billion cans, which is one of the things I'm most proud of. And you have quite a big geographical network. So where are your, where are you positioned at the moment globally? Yeah. So we have 33 facilities. Uh, spanning basically the world. We have a big concentration of, I think it's 17 right now facilities in North America, predominantly the U S we have a very large plant in Brazil in Europe. We're headquartered in Zurich, but we have plants in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the UK, and then in Asia, we're headquartered in South Korea, but we have plants as well in China. So all over. Yeah. And what's your specific role in the company? Yeah. So I lead the scrap procurement and planning side for North America. So we're right now about a thousand KT of scrap. Inputs an additional two, uh, slab and prime and hours and hardeners. And we've got a pretty, pretty big growth in the next five years with two plants. Guthrie, Kentucky, which is a auto casting plant, and we're ramping it up right now. And then we've got Baymanette scheduled in a couple of years. So that'll be big. Um, a few months ago, I visited your new offices in Atlanta. They're like another level. Is that where you, are you basing those offices? I'm based in those offices and those have a reason. So we were in much crappier offices pre pandemic and nobody wanted to go back to the office. And this was the, we've got coffee machines and baristas and, you know, sunlight and conference rooms and social areas and everybody's like, oh, okay, we'll go back two days a week. So, but it's, it's been great. Like people, people really enjoy it. And it's been, you miss that social interaction and really the way the office is laid out. It allows for that collaboration, the social interaction. It's been really good in that sense and good to connect with people again. Yeah. If I was, um, working from home, I would rather choose to come to your offices and no question. And we went for lunch around the corner or down in the center. It was. Fantastic. Yeah. Did you, did you have that cold, uh, nitrogen brew coffee brew or you, I didn't, no, no, I think nobody offered it to me. I'm brave. Come on back. That'll keep you awake for like seven days. So yeah, I like the challenge. I'm still on New Zealand time zones. So I don't know if I sleep or when I sleep and it's all mixed up at the moment. Tell me a bit about the recycled metal that you're buying. What are the qualities that you're looking? What are the kind of commodities that you're buying and why are they important to you? Yeah. So one of the biggest buckets of scrap we buy is UBC used beverage cans. Quality obviously is very important. The way it's packaged is important. I mean, going hand in hand with quality, the contamination, right? If it's very contaminated, it really messes up our operations. We need to bake the belt, the de lacquer, the oven that really melts. The paint and some of the contaminants out if it has a lot of plastic that gets stuck and then you got to stop the line and basically take everything out and bake it. So there's a lot of unplanned downtime there. So that part's really important. We buy 3x shred. Which is cleaned up old sheet, taint taper. We buy some other kinds of inputs for our can product. Obviously the class, the can process scrap is part of it. Um, and then we buy, that's more our can side than we buy for auto. We buy a lot of auto scrap. Most, a lot of it from OEMs directly. We want that closed loop and that sustainability, and that's part of what we stand for. And then we have our continuous cast facilities, which take in a large spectrum of scrap, ranging from old sheet, painted siding, MLC, to some of our more pure types of scrap, like litho or EC chops. And do you have, cause it's quite a big array of different metals you guys are purchasing and for different facilities, I'm sure as well. Do you have, is every trader of yours is each buyer buying all the commodities or they kind of set up to buy each different commodity? Yeah, no, we have specialized auto scrap buyers. And then within the non auto, we, there's a UBC buyer specifically. There's one that is a little bit of everything, but it's for larger accounts, national accounts. And then we spread out by geographies. Uh, there's one person that's only does the class scrap. So it's, it's a little bit of a hybrid, but we try to specialize where we can. And then, I mean, the U S is so large U S and Canada. Yeah. That it's geographical where we can't specialize. Yeah. And are you guys handling shipping ever or is everything delivered directly to you? What does the ideal shipment look like to you? Are you guys doing payment on packing? Are you waiting for it to arrive at your facilities? We do both. So I would probably guess about 50 percent is delivered and 50 percent we pick it up. So we have a pretty large logistics team and partner very closely with them to do all these pickups. Okay. So how do you get new clients or what happens if you're a metal recycler and you're looking to supply Novelis and after listening to this, you're like, Oh, hold on. This is probably a good end market for me to get into. What hoops do suppliers have to jump through and how open are you to bringing on new suppliers? Yeah. I mean, we're growing, so we're going to grow probably, um, 60%. In the next five years. So we are looking for new suppliers and new partners. I think there's a bunch of different ways, honestly, like reach out to me, to any of our buying team with what you're proposing or what you're offering, where. We've had the best success is when we have really partnered with our suppliers. So, you know, when we have a need and when our supplier understands our processes and they're able to give creative solutions, then that's where the best value is added from the supplier and from our sites. And I'll give you an example. We developed the 3xShred market. In the U S and that was basically UBC at the time had a super high price and we were looking for alternatives. We partnered with one of our suppliers and started looking at, Oh, chief tape taver, how could we clean it up? And it took us probably a good year to clean it up and get it to the right level of chemistries. And then it was all about, how do you deliver it? Do we deliver it? We ended up delivering it in dump trucks, shred in dump trucks. And there's a warehouse next to our brewery, a facility that they store it in and it's just in time shreds. And this has added a ton of value. It's probably the best example of how we've partnered with a supplier. And I think it's been a really good relationship on both sides. How many suppliers do you have like that? Um, that are making that 3X shred? Oh, that we are making a 3X shred? A few. Do you do any of it yourself? Do you have your own cleaning plans for shredded material? We don't. So everything you buy directly from source. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, not handling and not cleaning it yourself. Yeah. What other, what issues do you come across when buying material? I mean, obviously quality is standard, whatever, any, any melt is going to have that sort of issue that they come across. Is there anything else that, you know, metal recyclers should be aware of what they should be trying to avoid and what they should minimize as much as possible when dealing with yourselves? Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, the. Basics is your paperwork matches what you have in the truck. And I know we have a really bad reputation as being bullies and I, part of it's deserved. We're trying to change that. We're trying to be much more supplier centric, but one of the issues was we kept getting trucks that had, you know, five different things and the paperwork said a completely different thing. And it usually, it wasn't what we needed. So we've been. We were, I think, very flexible initially, but at some point we ended up with a lot of stuff that we did not need and started rejecting and started asking for a little bit more discipline. And I know that did not sit very well with the suppliers, but there's that good reason for why we did it. So I think that's the basics. Paperwork matches what was purchased, matches what's in the truck. it's not a lot to ask. Okay. I know it seems very, but it isn't, it should be the basics. It should be, you know, and I just want to touch on one thing you said before you go into the others, you use the term bully. I actually had this conversation two days ago at area at the great lakes convention or conference. And somebody was saying that one of the traders they sell to, and they don't really sell to them anymore because they found them too firm. And when his exam, and I prefer the word firm than bully, and his example was, you know, if there's a, if there's a small weight discrepancy of a couple hundred pounds or whatever, why do you even have to make that claim? And I was like, well, he's, it's going to be both ways. As long as it's both ways. Then this buyer is just trying to make sure that everything matches and it's legit and everything is kind of like above board. So I think the idea of you being a bully, and if it's because people aren't really supplying the material that they're meant to be supplying. I don't think that's necessarily being a bully. It's being firm, but it goes both ways. Yeah. And I've had, thank you. I appreciate that. And I've had this conversations and the suppliers were like, well, bear, when we sell you guys, we don't know exactly what we're going to have. So at the end of the day, what we do is we fill the truck with a bunch of different things. The majority being what we agreed. And you guys have accepted this for the last five years. Why are you changing now? And it's kind of like, I got it. I understand. Let's take it up a notch and let's be a little bit more disciplined. And Hey, look, we were all trying to do the best we can for our businesses. So. Yeah, sorry. I jumped in. You were going to give us a few others about, um, how the processes can help minimize these issues. Yeah, the other one we've had lately quite a bit and it led to a bunch of rejections is the trucks were so loaded. That we weren't able to unload them without, you know, the, without scratching the truck or damaging the truck, which then we would be responsible for. So that's been the culprit of some of these rejections. So that's another one. Third is delivering and we're very flexible. I think we're quite flexible with the time. So if it's the windows, I believe. In my view, pretty broad, I'm sure there's other views to this, but for example, when we have a contract and we're buying UBC and we're in the middle of February, which is usually the time we're really tight. And then this gets pushed out to May when. Everybody's doing great. It doesn't work. So, and I know in February, the market's really hot and probably somebody got a better price for that, but the consistency, the keeping your word and the trust happens. And we've been on the other sides too, because when we have reliability issues or our inventories are full and we don't have anywhere to put it, then we ask suppliers to stop selling us. And, and we try to minimize this and this has been a constant fight internally because it's cashflow and inventory. And we're like, guys, our suppliers can't hold material, they don't have space. It's not fair. So what we're trying to do is create a few, we're cementing pads in our plants to allow us to hold a little bit more inventory and be more supplier centric. So I know it goes both ways, but delivering at least. Relatively on time. What you say you're going to deliver is pretty important. I want to just double click and delve into that a little bit more. So we talking about, are you, I want to be clear. Are you talking about. Monthly agreements. So like an annual contract or a quarterly contract where they got to supply a certain volume per month, or are you even talking about a spot sale meant to come in the following month? And it doesn't because the market moves. We usually, it's usually more of the contracts or the quarterly deals, the spot sales we can manage because we know there's some fluctuation there. So it's more the long term agreements. Yeah. So that's what I was thinking. Right? So if it's the long term agreements, you're saying on both sides, sometimes the supplier doesn't fulfill their entire order, and sometimes you can't actually even take their entire order. Surely, and I'm going to go both ways here, so nobody's to blame, but surely if you have an agreement for that volume, don't you still, if it was you guys, for example, if the material was meant to come in February and you couldn't take it and it came in March, do you still give them the price based on February supply? We do that. Yes. Yes. Okay. So then it's really, yeah, I was going to say, yeah, I don't want all the comments are going to come in. That's not what I'm joking. We'll block the comments for this one. Don't worry, but it goes both ways, right? So when they're not supplying, they might decide, oh, the market's gone up. So I'm not going to supply you or supply it in the following month. They still will get last month's price. Because that just is fair. Now I used to do huge amount of long term agreements into Korea. This is 10, 15 years ago of huge volumes of copper. And that's exactly how it worked, right? You couldn't play with it. If you still, if you delivered short this month, well, your first bit of order, first bit of supply for the following month was, and you had to stop playing catch up to try and get back into the market. So that's fair. And it's fair if it's happening, both sides. What I always don't like to see is a bully in the industry. So where it's very one sided and that's why I wanted to just clarify earlier on that. I don't think your explanation of a bully, a bully is, you know, somebody who makes a fictitious claim because the market drops and they're holding the balance of the 10 percent last bit of payment. And they just take advantage of the market job and they say, sorry, and then make up a claim and they're in control because they have the last money outstanding or whatever it might be. That to me is being a bully. Because you have an unfair advantage in a negotiation and it doesn't feel like that's what you were necessarily saying. So happy with that. Suppliers need to try and make sure that they keep to their orders, whatever they're meant to be supplying in a month, they need to try and do the same way you need to try and make sure you can take as much as possible. And you're looking to, to fix that at the moment by creating more space and more availability for what needs to come in. That's cool. Um, so those are kind of the issues that you might have seen from some suppliers. What trends are you seeing in the recycled metals market at the moment? And are these going to have huge effects on your operations? Yeah, I think from the demand side, what we're seeing is more demand. So more, more males, ADA is coming in. We're going to have Baymanette. There's a lot of deep bottlenecking. There's new casting centers being announced. So there's going to be more demand. I think we're concerned with Mexico has been. Exporter into the U S and we're a little bit concerned. Mexico's some of, especially the UBC is going to Asia. I mean, China has been relaxing its legislation quite a bit, so it can now take UBC direct basically. So we're concerned there's more domestic demand and there's more external demand that will tighten a lot. The, the U S market on the supply side. I think what we're seeing is. There's two things. So from the supply side, we're seeing two things. One is a consolidation of players and also a growth that does not match the growth we're seeing on the demand side. So again, if we double click on the UBC front, we've been, we have a pretty stagnant 45 to 50 percent recycling rate for probably the last 20 years. And we just can't get past that. And even now, if you start looking at most of our recycled UBCs coming from our deposit states and our deposit states, there's some states that have attended 10 cent deposit, and some have a 5 cent deposit. We're seeing a decrease in the recycling in the 5 cent deposit, because I think with all these, all this inflation and how much the value of things. Five cents isn't enticing enough for people to go and make that extra effort. So we need to really rethink things or through technology, capture UBCs before they go to landfill in a different way. If not, it's going to be, it's already going to be a tight market, but it's going to make it a much tighter market. What do some of the other parts of the world do that have a higher, a higher rate of recycling for cans? Surely under 50 percent is poor, especially in American standards, that would be striving to do better. I hear a lot about recycling more cans. And obviously Jess does a lot from scrap university and, but the kids books and trying to start at a younger age. And hopefully that comes through in the future. What can we do better? What can, you know, what can everybody do better? What are the places doing that are better? Yeah. I mean, if you take Brazil and that's the country that has 100%, Recycling is phenomenal. The value of the can allows people to be professional UBC collectors, right? So you're in Brazil, having a beer at the beach. And as you tip your can up, somebody kind of pops up the corner, right? So they know, Oh, it's almost empty. We're going to go pick it up or collect it on the street or, but it's, it's. That's the livelihood. I think we could almost take that. If you go to Oregon where it's a 10 cent deposit, there are folks that can live off collecting UBCs, but for the rest of the U S it's extremely difficult, especially those states that don't have deposits. So I think that's very unique. And I think it's very similar to Mexico where again, the cost of living is pretty. Pretty cheap. And therefore just the value of aluminum can give you that livelihood. If you take Europe, for example, which is probably a little bit similar to the U S in terms of cost of living, there's a lot of governments. Involvement, right? So there's now, I think, 4 or 5 different countries that are setting up deposit systems or extended producer responsibility system. So they're putting a lot of responsibility on the producers of cans to pick up their trash. And I think. That would be, this is a very controversial topic because the way that the deposit systems in the US, especially if you take, for example, Oregon, it doesn't allow for some of the industry that is collecting UBC and selling it, it kind of monopolizes that. Right. And that's where I think there's a lot of pushback on this. So, Is there a way, and this is, I, I spent probably the last three years. Is there a way where we let everybody participate? Cause there's no, I don't think, especially if I put my Novelis, there's no intent to take UBC away from anybody. We just want the UBC. Like how do we divert it from landfill and have everybody be happy with the solution and make everybody win? Is there a way we can do that across different players? And there was a group that was started at RIMA. To do just this, how do we increase recycling rates? And then I think we just never aligned on what the scope and what the intent was, and it just, it didn't lead to any fruition, but yeah. It needs that economic incentive, but it has to make sense in the full circularity of the whole, the value chain. The money just can't come out of fresh air and just go, well, now we're going to pay for all these cans extra than the value is, unless you have government incentives actually backing it. And that's, that's not so simple in a place like the U S there's a lot of red tape to get through to, to kind of get, to get something like that pulled off. So yeah, but, but like you're saying, you know, You just want the other 50 percent that's going to landfall. We just want that back in the market, right? For many reasons, but that's, I think, got to be the main focus. And if people can come together and try and work out how we achieve that, you know, whether you are competitors or not, really, that's what we want. We want the material back in the market. Correct. Yeah. And then, and you can take a look at like, where do you intercept this? Is this, do you educate the consumer so they put it in the right bin? And you know, I think it was, maybe I'm misquoting that percentage, but I think 50 percent of, I think it was 80 actually, 80 percent of the UBCs that end up at landfill, the people making the choice do have a recycling bin they could put it in. Which is that one was even more shocking to me. It's like, oh man, we're just so lazy, you know, uh, if you don't know that the aluminum can can be recycled, how do you know what can go in that recycle bin? Like I get it when people are unsure with plastics, you can't tell me people still don't know that it can go in the recycling or is it just actually no one cares. I think it's, I think it's the latter. No one cares. It's got to be because everybody knows that it can be, you know, Well, I would like to think everybody knows that it can be recycled. So it makes me think about technology, right? So the MRF lines, they're sorting all the waste should be going through MRF lines. Therefore they shouldn't actually be 50 percent if it's coming through the waste stream shouldn't be going into, into landfill. So let's talk about technology. What, what are you excited about that? What are you excited about? That's coming out in the middle Recycling. And processing industry at the moment, what innovation, what technology. Yeah. I mean, sortations the hot topic right now. And I think the vision systems, the optical sortation where we're detecting exactly what's going through the lines is advancing tremendously. And then the way either through robots. Or jet nozzles or different ways to actually separate it physically. I think that's coordinating very well with the vision systems as well. So I think we're, we've seen a lot of progress the last couple of years. And I think what we're going to see in the next three to five. Will maybe allow us even like to think about, and I know it sounds really ridiculous right now, but even think about like landfill mining and similar ideas where again, if you think about 45 percent recycling rate for the last 20 years, we got a lot of UBC in our landfills today. Yeah, that would be ideal. I just, it's got to be cost effective, right? And that's what it's going to come down to. It's not going to be a charity is not going to start mining landfills, but there's value there. There's no doubt, you know, and that's just starting to talk about just the cans that's before you think about anything else that has been tipped there over the last 20, 30 years, there is huge value in those landfills and it's going to come around, you know, who's going to see that value, who's going to come up with the best. Facility or the best operation to be able to mine that. Um, uh, yeah, it's going to be an interesting space to watch for sure. Yeah. Bear what if somebody is already doing business with you or on and off on the spot market, what can they do to become a better. Long term supplier of yours. I know there's obviously things like do what we've spoken about earlier, make sure that what's in the paperwork is the correct amount or correct what you're actually packing. But what sort of advice do you have for me to recite? Cause that want to build a long term plan with you or long term partnership with you, or, you know, have long term agreements with you, but it currently just on the spot side of things. Yeah, I think the, uh, again, the best. Success we've had with suppliers usually have been the ones we sit down with. They understand our process. They understand where we're going for the next five years, and we co create solutions together. To fit the new needs, right? So right now, one of the things that's really big on our agenda is Twitch sortation, right? We're seeing a market that's going to be tight and we see quite a bit of Zorba being exported out. Is there a way for us to upscale the Zorba into Twitch and then into cast raw products, divide the raw products into the different buckets and consume that? And I, the technologies, I think it's very close and if we can partner to not only be the end consumer and very specify very clearly our needs, but we have a lot of technology, technological resources, and a lot of multimetal margin experts and a lot of expertise across the board and partner with that know how as well. I think we'll all be better. We'll create. A new scrap stream, new sorts of revenue for our suppliers, and we'll get our needs filled. So that's the latest example. Kind of taking a step back to answer your questions too. It's, it's sitting down with us, understanding the process, understanding where we're going and then partnering to be able to really fill those needs together. And I think it comes down to partnerships or collaboration, right? Those words are what's absolutely key. If you're in a partnership with your, um, buyer, with the end user, whoever it might be, or you guys with your supplier, you work together to get to places and when it's just by transactions, you're not necessarily looking to, um, achieve the same outcomes. Um, it's very transactional that, whereas if you consider it a partnership. Immediately it changes the whole way that you look at it. And I like what you say. It's, it's about sitting down together. We used to do it often in my previous company, sit with the buyers, make sure that we are aligned. So we know what you're looking for. You know, what we're looking for in this partnership, and then you can actually get somewhere. If it's purely transactional and every single trade, you're trying to get every cent and push every single cent for every single pound, that's not going to be necessarily the best outcome in the longterm. So. Yeah, engage, engage, engage, I would say, yeah, that's absolutely key. 100%. And I think that the relationships, the long term relationships, and we're all about long term relationships, the ones we've had, it allows you to navigate the ups and downs because there's always going to be ups and downs. And especially the downs, it's like, okay, there's a claim, or we can't agree to a price. We think you're being greedy. We think you're not being, you know, you're not giving tip for tat. The history you've had allows you to get over those. And the breaking breads and the I scratched your back there and I scratched your back here and we're in this for the long term. Let's figure this out. I think that history is super important for you to get through those downs. Yeah, it's relationship industry, right? And what you're talking about there is building those relationships with each other. And that'll help you get through the ups and downs. Let's talk about ups and downs though. When the market's fluctuating as they have been drastically over the last while, and prices are up and down. Do you guys, of course you need a certain amount of volume. Let's maybe just. Relate this to the spot market more than it is for your agreements. Do you leave the market when the price is down? Do you buy more when it's down? Are you coming into the market aggressively at any time, depending on prices? Are you monitoring that on a monthly basis or is it you have a set amount that you need to buy? Doesn't matter what the price is going to be. That's what you're buying it. Yeah. What we do is, I mean, we're a manufacturing company. So at the end of the day, like we need to serve our customers. We need to get X amount of coils out the door. So it's not like we stop and start our equipment. And we have probably, I guess we've got probably 50 percent of our needs and contract and 50 percent spot our contracts. We again, unless there's really weird conditions, we honor them markets up or down. It doesn't matter. And then the 50 percent remaining what we try to do is we try to optimize the costs. Of our ingots so we can blend scrap a little bit differently and if there's alternative scraps that if you when you calculate your price plus your recovery, because depending on the contamination of your scrap, you'll have a better recovery or worse recovery that is then put into a basically a chemistry calculator. That allows us to optimize based on cost, having to optimize for the right chemistry. So, there might be some, some fluctuations in how much volume we buy of one scrap or the other. But overall, the net amount is going to be, if we have no reliability issues, it will be the same. So let's just talk back to these, the metal recyclers for a second, when they are looking to supply, if say, for example, somebody hasn't supplied you before, where would you think they should be starting? And where can they add? Where could you, where should they add more value to maximize, I guess, the supply? The opportunity to trade with you. So of course your UBCs are probably where you really super strong and probably the best in the world. Are there any other commodities or what could they do better to make sure that they get full value of trading with Novelis? Yeah, I mean, I think there's, UBC is a big one. Painted siding is another one that's always a hot topic. Auto scrap, that one's a little bit tricky because we usually go direct for most of that. So that one's hard. It's, it's more, can I be part of the supply chain? So the way the OEMs, Spit out the scrap and the way we consume it in our plants, usually there's a step or two in the middle, call it baling, some densification for our plant in Oswego, there's a tier one qualification to make sure it doesn't have any moisture for our new plants that doesn't exist, or what we're doing now is we're doing sortation with mixed scrap. So can you participate in those one or two steps within the supply chain? That's an option. And then really, I mean, again, we're growing so much that we're looking for to just get more scrap. So if reach out to us, tell us what you have and we'll probably fit you in. Right now we're growing the auto scrap. Probably in two years, we'll grow all the other kinds of scrap. So there's plenty of opportunity to get to know each other. Yeah, it's good to get started early when you do keep growing at least and you already have a partnership. Is there one thing you wish these metal processors knew about your business? Um, I think the first one is the growth. Because again, we're looking for new partners or new suppliers and we're trying to create these new forms of scrap or do scrap streams that don't exist today. So that's 1. I think the 2nd 1 is, you know, there's things are interpreted different ways in the market. And again, if we don't buy scrap at a certain time, because of inventory, and I'm not saying this is right, then that's why we're building the cement paths to be more supplier centric. But I think the more you understand what we're trying to get out and the ways we do business, I think the more you'll understand some of the limitations or some of the asks we're putting on some of our suppliers. And I think the then the. The perception or the ease of doing business will be easier. It's not easy to do business on Novelis and just maybe my little marketing plug here. There's a lot of things we're doing. We've cleaned up our payment systems. We've tried to improve the way you schedule loads into our plans to make it a lot easier. We're trying to clean up the communication between. The status of where the loads are and our suppliers, we're trying to be a little bit more flexible and ask the plants to raise the, um, the level of contamination or decrease to some extent, a little bit of the quality standards. So we can accept more we've put what we call scrap champions. At each of our plants. So these are the folks that are operators, but they work for the metal team. So when a load is going to be rejected, we send the scrap champion out to say, make sure it's not just the two plastic bottles on the top, like make sure it truly is a rejection. And I think that's done wonders so far. I mean, we've gone from 17 rejections a month in one of our camp plans to 6. So there's a lot of things we're trying to do to be more supplier centric. And I, I hope that's. That's noticed and valued. And I, and again, we're still the big fish and big fish in this industry, probably not big at all in the world, but we're trying to accommodate for working with very different sized companies that maybe don't have. The benefit of holding on to scrap or being a little bit tighter with what they provide in their paperwork and the truck or things like that. So that's my, those, those scrap champions must've changed the game, not just on the step that you just told me, but I'm just thinking now the amount of time when I used to be a buyer for the large metal recycling company, I would buy and it would arrive and the operations team who are not on the customer side at all. Would see, as you said, one plastic bottle on the top and reject the whole load. So having somebody who's actually representing you and the customer. On the floor is an incredible idea. And I think that'll have a huge impact on your customer relationship, the partnerships that you have, as well as the life for the buyers in your team that are having to deal with this on a daily basis. Agree. That was just implemented. So we'll see. I'll tell you in a year, how many, how much has, yes, exactly. Season four. Awesome. Um, bad. This has been awesome. I love that we put this together. This is a great way to start the season. I think there's. Huge amount of gold here for anybody that's looking to start a relationship with you guys. Uh, so I'm sure people will be reaching out to you soon. But before we go, I want to just end with getting to know you personally a little bit more. We know that you play professional soccer. Now we're going to find out what's your favorite TV series or movie. I'm one of the classics. I like friends. I put it on the plane. Laugh out loud. It's, it's a feel good one on the plane. I was going to say the exact same thing. The amount I'm traveling friends. I've watched everyone on the plane five times. Love it. Yeah. I'm in the same boat or plane favorite place to visit. Uh, I like to go home. Madrid is a big one, but if not, if it's one of these, uh, more exotic visits. I love Thailand. I am a scuba diver and Thailand's amazing. Cool. Where in particular, in, in Thailand. Do you like to go the islands or are you on Pke in the main area or KPI is one of my favorites. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Love peepee. Yeah. Very cool. Have you got a favorite book? My favorite book, it's a little bit spiritual, but it's the Untethered Soul. Have you read it? I haven't. No. It's a deeper one. It's not a plain book. I'm pretty sure if it's deep, I'm pretty sure Lisa's read it. She'll be editing this and she'll be like, of course I've read it, Stuart, I've told you about it 10 times. So sorry, Lisa, that I didn't listen well enough. Um, do you have a favorite quote? Everybody in the industry loves to throw quotes around. Have you got a favorite one? I do have a favorite quote. I'm going to, uh, it's a little bit long. You can read it. It's the man in the arena. Have you heard about this one? Have I heard it? My favorite quote. There you go. Are you going to read it? Please read it. I want to end this with you reading it. I absolutely love it. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly. Who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end of triumph or high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Um, on that note with some goosebumps to leave with, that's unbelievable. Thank you so much, Bea. I had a great time in this episode. Thank you, Stu. Really lovely conversation. Cheers, Bea. Bye.