Born Scrappy
The go-to podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders
Born Scrappy
Overcoming Challenges in Trade with Vishal Jatia and Aldo Jordan
In this week’s episode, I chat with Vishal Jatia, Owner of Greenland Inc., and Aldo Jordan, President of The Metals Agency.
These two industry veterans have traded through the wildest of market swings—and they’re here to talk about the strategies that help scrappies not just survive but thrive in volatile conditions.
We dive into:
👉 Navigating global logistics disruptions
👉 Adapting to shifting Chinese tariffs
👉 Strategic pivots when exports collapse
👉 Why relationships and real-time info matter
👉 The risk of putting material on water
👉 Domestic vs export playbooks
👉 And much more!
Whether you’re moving 10 containers a month or just starting to think globally, this episode is a crash course in how to keep your edge in uncertain times.
Listen to the full episode. Wherever you stream your podcasts.
Born Scrappy. Brought to you by Buddy.
The only marketplace and trade OS built for scrappies, by scrappies.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/tradewithbuddy/
WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?
26 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
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. Today's episode was recorded last month live at the Rema Convention in sunny San Diego. It's a powerful conversation about resilience in the scrap trade and how to keep deals flowing through turbulent times. Joining me on stage with two incredible guests, both who have been on the show before. Vishal Jia Ono Greenland, and Aldo Jordan, president of the Metals Agency. In this week's episode, we chat about tariff turbulence, market diversification, communication and cross-training, resilience and mentorship, data-driven risk management, and so much more. So let's jump into it. The two of my favorite people in the industry, but first intro. Today we're talking about, uh, trading through volatile markets. We're speaking to two of the most experienced people I know in this, um, and I had requested that they join me to really give some insights into what we've experienced over the last few months. We can all remember 2008, similar in a way, but super volatile, super tough markets. So the idea here is, um, to really speak to the guys and get, um, insights on how to help us through really difficult times. I will say very early on, um, through these difficult times, there are opportunities. So it's also your mindset and how you look at things as well. And hopefully that starts to come through with so. Vishal, if you can just introduce yourself, um, probably more for the recording than the people sitting in here.'cause I'm sure everybody here knows you, introduce yourself, what you do in the industry, how long you've been in it, et cetera. Sure. Stu, thank first of all, thank you for having me. We really appreciate that. You know, the conference has been great so far and I think it's hopefully getting better soon. Um, I'm Vishal from, uh, Greenland America. We are a third generation family run business. Uh, my grandfather started the company. Back in 1980, uh, we have our office in Atlanta, in China, and in India. Uh, our business is primarily export of non-fat, scrap metal. Uh, we are based in the US but we trade globally. Uh, we buy from Latin America, Mexico, Canada, Europe, uk, Australia, New Zealand. Uh, and our main destinations are India and. Yes, China. Uh, so it's, it's been an interesting ride, you know, and, uh, we have a great team of, of traders of course, you know, and logistics and back office and everything else. Uh, we, which we run from our office in India. Uh, so that's been, uh, that's been good. I actually live in India myself, but I work US hours living in India, which I've been doing for 15 years now. So, kind of used to, you know, just seeing the sunset or seeing the sunrise and. Seeing the sunset as well. That's when I usually start my day. So that's not really good for your health. He's actually only 25 years old. Thank you. I I will take that. I will take that. Although, let's, uh, let's hear, what about you? Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to participate. I always enjoy the conversations and also to have this opportunity with my friend Bial. Um, my name is Aldo Jordan. I had the pleasure to be in the industry now close to, uh, 20 years. Uh, both on the operations commercial side and most recently, last two years under my own company, the Meadows Agency, uh, we're of a niche service provider as we provide commercial services for end consumers in Europe and Asia. And we also provide commercial services from logistics, hedging, commercial operations, banking services for smaller yards in the US that maybe don't have those services readily available to them. Um, we trade on some 20 plus countries today, and we see ourselves more as a service provider along with, uh, a trading partner as well. And I have had both the privilege to, and, and good business, uh, dealings with both you and. Yeah, it's good help. Appreciate it. So, um, Vishal, you mentioned earlier that, um, you, you deal with China and I think that's, you know, on everybody's lips at the moment. So how has the latest tariffs impacted your strategy specifically for China and I guess overarching across the board And Alder, I'd like to know yours as well afterwards. Sure. I mean, let's talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room, right? I mean, that's, that's China. Uh. Our, our main business was export, or is, was, was, uh, from, from the US to China. Right. And we trade a lot of copper and brass going towards China. Of course. Uh, you know, I, I feel like China has always been prepared for something like this. You know, the good thing was that the buyers in China were actually prepared right. When Trump became president. So right in November itself, you know, when Trump became president, they knew that there was gonna be an impact. They actually stopped buying material from the US back in January itself, right? So the tariffs come in place in, in March or April. We don't have that many containers going to China in the first place because the buyers already preempted that this is what was going to happen, which was very fortunate for us because otherwise we would have a boatload of containers on the water and, and then, you know, we'd have to scramble to try to fix that problem. Them. Um, it's unfortunate. I think, you know, what's, what's happening between the two countries? I mean, you know, everybody wants to see free and fair trade, you know, uh, across the borders. Of course, the US has their view. Chinese have their view. But at the end of the day, I just feel like, you know, it, it affects the common man, you know, and the common people on the ground and small businesses and in both parts of the world, and who's really winning in this fight, you know? Or is this just a fight for ego, right? I mean, at, at some point, but. We have to make, do with the situations that they are, and we have to adapt and be flexible. Change our strategies quickly before time runs out or before others. Take advantage of an opportunity that may be presented to you. So, you know a lot going on with, uh, Rachel. Okay. So I'm not gonna let you get away with that answer. Sorry, Relle. We're gonna go deep here. What is actually your change of strategy? I mean, I asked you what's the change of strategy? You told me we have to change strategy. How have you changed your strategy since January? Now you're talking about they stopped buying, you were selling a lot in there. What have you done that's different? So, you know, I mean, of course we can't sell to China, but what that means is we have other markets that are open to us. What we used to sell to China was mainly copper and brass scrap and. Now we have new homes for the same material. Of course, some of the Chinese have also moved to other countries and are buying that material in different countries. But we also have new consumers now, actual new consumers in Japan, uh, and now in India. India has really become a bigger destination for copper, which it never was earlier, but over the last month when things really started to to to go a little crazy, we've supplied more and more copper scrap and brass scrap to India. So that's been one change, you know, where we've able to do. But of course, you have to be cautious when you are approaching a new market or a new buyer. You gotta do your due diligence, you gotta get your references and do all of that. You gotta visit them, see whether they can do it or not. So that's been a biggest change probably, is actually going out there, finding new homes or, uh, expanding existing homes, but to new countries. How, how have you done that though? Sorry? Although we'll get to you soon, I promise. That's okay. How have you, um. Have you hired a new team because you might've had people on the ground in China. Have you hired a new team or you have you sent people over and gone like, find us new homes. We desperately need homes. Like what are you actually doing strategically to do it, to execute? That's a great question and I think, you know, fortunately for us, uh, we have our own office in India and we've been present in the Indian market. We've known these buyers for a while. It's just that US crap has never been competitive in the Indian market. But now that the China is out and we have to ship material to Japan, the price is already lower in Japan than it was in China. So now all of a sudden, the Indian price becomes competitive. So, and that's the importance of actually being present in different countries. All throughout. It's hard to be just opportunistic and try to find new buyers when you know, when something happens. Because at that point, everyone's trying to do the same thing and it's, it's not the easiest thing to do. You know, I, I, were you always in Japan? Uh, we were, uh, always it, at least with the customers that we are currently sending, sending material to. And then, you know, what happens is they introduce one or two customers themselves. You know, we ask them, I mean, we have a good relationship with the buyer. So to find a new buyer in another country, you talk to the buyer and you are, you can ask them literally, you know, Hey, who else can we sell to? You know, can you buy the capacity that we wanna sell? We wanna sell 20 loads. You can buy 10, I'll sell you 10, but can you suggest the way I can sell the other 10? So that helps. Although, what about your strategy? How have you, what have you implemented? Vishal would like to keep answering questions. Alright, so, uh, Becky Vishal? No. Um, for, for us it specifically has been a very different dynamic, but just to put into perspective when it comes to China, think about the China on a regular mon consumes 80% of the copper exports out of the us Okay? So if you think about this, this convention hole trying to relocate 80% of these square footage. Across the street to other countries. It doesn't happen overnight. Right. And it, it certainly requires commercial operations, like, like Greenlands, that are all over the, the planet to be able to capture that, that movement because instead of going across the street, you're going across the globe. For us, specifically in the Meadows Agency, one of our biggest uh, clients happens to be a copper refinery business in Europe. So for us, we have seen the, the opposite effect of what's happening in the domestic market. We have become, uh, a lot of people's new friend because we can offer liquidity into a market that can be illiquid sometimes. Uh, b Brickley copper has been around 145 plus years. Uh, so certainly a very, a very long, uh, tenure company. Um, and the capacity of what we can offer. We are uniquely kind of qualified to be able to use copper refinery products that range from 30% copper all the way to 99% copper. So you can see two very contrasting dynamics, uh, about the same issue and certainly, uh, very telling about India as well. I appreciate your comment in India, I never seen the, the level of competitiveness, especially on copper coming out of the India market as you see recently. For sure. I think always, um, when these sort of things come into play, and I remember it quite well in South Africa where there was a huge, some of you guys might remember when they, um, stopped all the exports out of the country. Yeah. Um, you know, there's winners and there's losers. We were able to pivot as a company and become a consumer in Southern Africa. We had all the copper pretty much. Um, so it's hugely beneficial. And as you can see, two completely different ends of the spectrum here. Some people will benefit, some people will find it more difficult and have to quickly pivot. Um, what about the latest news that just come outta China, I think was yesterday, well, sorry, come out of here, I guess, out of the US just yesterday. How is that impact?'cause now you, you're moving material elsewhere and all of a sudden they're like, well, you know, we're gonna drop these tariffs a little bit. What are you doing? Is there an immediate change or is it not ac you're not actually gonna change right now? No, I mean, so from, uh, from what I've heard, it's still at 10%, you know, the, the import tariff right into, into China. Um, and no, I think it's 30 30. Uh, 30% China, it's 30% coming into the US and 10% going into China. So the reciprocal tariff in China is correct, is at 10%. We, we've gotta check Twitter to make sure that changed in the last 10 might 10 minutes, two years. Exactly. So you ask George Adams how many yards he is had there. You at the end of the episode is normally two more, but uh. No, I was just gonna say, you know, there, there's two problems to that, right? There's the actual effect of the, the information that comes out because technically speaking, we're a 10% tariff and, and then there is the, the unknown effect of when is the next cycle news coming up with something different. Sure. And I think when it comes to uncertainty, that is really what's driving a lot of these issues. I think that at some point the market will accept some kind of tariff. If we would say that's the number, that's what it is, deal with it. Go trade, you know? But I don't think that that information is settled by any means today. There is nobody made, there's no like immediate move back into China or anything like that. Nobody's just still holding everyone is, I mean, even at 10% tariff, it just doesn't work. You know? Think of our margins, you know, 1%, 2% margins as traders. Even at 5% it won't work. Even at 3% it won't work. You know, it's, it's really gotta be zero. Your traders make about 15%, is that right? We would like to think so. I don't, you know that traders in the audience. No, but, but that's, that's certainly a good point that beyond the margin part, I mean, think about a 10% on$200,000 containers of copper is$20,000. And the other implication not only is just that number, is the insurance cost goes up, the financing cost goes up. So it's, it's 10 multiplier for everything else that you gotta deal with. No, and and the other thing is, you know, even if it was 0% right now, like, like he was saying, there's only a pause for 90 days. Yeah. What happens after 90 days? You know, how can anybody buy material now that's gonna arrive 90 days later and not know what the tariff is going? That risk is the biggest problem. That's the biggest problem. Right. And we felt that I think pretty much from February. Yes. Um, we've seen it that nobody was willing to put something on the water because those tariffs can change. And a lot of the material obviously stayed more domestically'cause they didn't have to worry about it locally. Um, exports dropped off a cliff. You guys would've felt it quite hard as well. Sure. Um, and a lot of people have, therefore obviously pivoted. We talk about copper and we talk about China. What about other material? What are you seeing? I mean, Malaysia struggling at the moment as well. What other markets are having a hard time and what, what commodities are you actually struggling to sell right now? You know, I think India has really taken up a lot of slack, uh, from, from China. You know, whether it's the low grade stuff like electric motors and alternators starters. Uh, you know, that's, that's kind of going, I think what we are struggling to export is a lot of aluminums, you know, the aluminums are really staying domestic in the us you know, the mills are buying it. It's only when the domestic mills get full and their delivery appointments go out till June, July and August. That's when yards who don't have the holding power have to export it, you know, so that they can get paid. Right. And they will do so at a lower price, you know, but then again, when there is a domestic opening, they will take that first, uh. Another component that is certainly not helping us. Steamship line transit times are expanding widely because there's a lot of capacity coming out of the routes. So even when you know that you have a 90 day retrieve going into China, some of these schedules are now extending so far out that if you get rolled into the next booking, yes, there's a good chance that you mind up on that 90 day window. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I mean, think about the other uncertainties, right, that are there is shipping to logistics. I mean, there's no vessels coming in from China, right, because of the import tariffs, or there are a lot of blank sailings that are projected to be out in the next a month or two ahead. So another change that we as traders have to make now is actually plan for the future and make bookings in advance and keep those bookings so that we can plan and plan those shipments, which we may or may not be able to, to ship, you know, at that point. What sort of changes are you making inside your trading companies, um, to be able to actually manage these really volatile periods? Um, you know, this could range from, um, having some of the employees doing different tasks, maybe operating in different areas, you know, um, some different policies that you might have. What are you doing internally? Well, for me has been a lot of communication and cross training. We've really taken this opportunity to be overly community. Make sure that the clients understand what is happening. We're try to give them as much of the context of the information so they can make informed decisions. Um, I think that that really has helped us a lot to like kind of navigate the uncertainty and at least if there is not a concrete answer that we can provide, we can provide some kind of perspective to be able to help make a determination. Do I wanna bring that copper cut into the US in the next 60 days? And what is my risk? That I'm looking at if I'm being able to make that trade. Yeah. From our perspective is, uh, get the traders busy, right? Get the traders on the phone, you know, talk to as many people as you can. The more information that you can gather from outside, the better informed decisions that you're gonna be able to make. You know, uh, we also started doing some domestic business, right? I mean, and, and we were kind of led into this because we are being offered all this crap, but. We need an outlet as well. And if export is not viable, domestic becomes the next option. Now it's harder to suddenly get into the domestic game, but, you know, we try and, and that's kind of the, the adjustments that we're trying to make and, and move forward. Yeah, I mean, pivoting in this sort of a situation is a no brainer, right? I mean, we, with Buddy, we were just an export platform. We were only gonna be an export platform for the rest of this year. We were always gonna go domestic, but it was gonna come at a later stage. I think it was February or March, our numbers just disappeared. It was just no one was willing to risk, no one was putting material out for sale. And even if they did put up, buyers weren't willing to risk it. And, and, and that was immediately where we just decided, you know, bring forward the domestic offering. And it makes sense. I think your company and my company probably pretty similar in that it's like, well, let's focus on the domestic side. But as you say, it's hard'cause you guys are known as a, a great exporter, a trusted exporter. Now all of a sudden, you know, can people rely on you domestically? It's gonna take you some time to build that up. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, what's important is to make that pivot at the right time, you know, and to have that flexibility like you've done and like, you know, we've all done, all trying to do is, is that, you know, and that's, that's really what, there are things that are in your control and there are things that are out of your control. You've got to forget about the things that are out of your control and just try to control better the things that are within. That's a very good point. It's easy to get very comfortable. With the things that you're doing when things are not changing and there's no disruptions, right? And all of a sudden you can only do certain things. And it's always, at least in my approach from from the selling perspective, I wanna have as many homes available to me as many options available to me and logistically and credit wise, or customer, customer-wise, understand, you know, even if this is not something that I can utilize every day, I know the mechanics of how to utilize this relationship in this option because. As we've seen lately, now we're trying to make use of all those channels that we would normally not go to. Yeah. It's funny, you talk about how when things are going well, the status quo, we like to just keep doing what we're doing. I, I'm not allowed to do that. I'm married to somebody who like wakes up every morning and he is like, why do we do it like that? Is that the best way? That's awesome. Should we not change? Let's get 1% better every single day. That's a true story. Quick little side note, I'm not allowed to sit on a couch on the weekends. That's a true story.'cause she gets disgusted by me sitting on couches. We should be active and doing That's a true story. You can check her, she's in, that's awesome. I don't know. Please have a go at her about that if you're looking for compassion around for this girl. But I don't think it's gonna happen. And I think the point is, you know, instead of. Even in the status quo, you should constantly be thinking about how you can, if you had Jesse Cole's talk yesterday, you know, it's constantly just looking, where is the friction? How can you get better all the time? And then you obviously get thrown a curve ball and I say, well, you're actually got some muscle memory and you've created this ability to pivot because you're constantly changing and constantly getting better. No, and just adding onto that, you know, and we were lucky enough that, okay, we did make a decision that, okay, we want to expand into other countries outside of the us right? Also. So we. Had a presence in Latin America, uk, Europe, Australia, New Zealand. You know, when you were there in New Zealand we were doing business as well. So it's, I think that's really helping now because the Chinese are still hungry for the material and all of a sudden the appetite for material from outside of the US has increased, of course. So our business has actually pivoted in that direction. You know, if it was 50 US and 50 rest of the world, now it's 30, 70. When. Hopefully the, you know, we can just keep adding onto that. Yeah, that, that's an interesting point. I think that China, of course, is one of the largest global economy, will continue to be a big player in the market. But, you know, you guys have been around, uh, green fence now. This one, um, new, is it new? We, we have been here before and we will have similar problems in Malaysia and Thailand as they. Kind of navigate through different environmental regulations and things like that. So there, there is a certain playbook that looks very familiar because we have been on these kind of uncharted territories before. It just kind of have a different name. Uh, I don't if you remember a year, 2008. Very well. It's like I, we stopped selling to China. Yeah. That was just an absolute nightmare. There was a period there that you would never, you know, for months you did not sell to China.'cause they didn't pay for it when it arrived on the other side, you know it Well, some of them, right. Some of them didn't pay. I would say most of them did. You know, and, and they were actually, uh, there, they were trying, you know, now, yeah, maybe they didn't pay all at once, but over time. You know, they've, they've kind of made that up, right. But yes, 2008 was, it was a disaster, but it actually taught you a lot and it, it absolutely, it weed out the bad ones, you know, both on the supply and on the, on the buying side. Yeah. And that's big asset to have moving forward. So, uh, uncertainties bring about those opportunities. Well, nobody learned anything between 2005 to 2008. No.'cause you could buy it at your sell price, sell it a week later and make a lot of money. That was pretty much how the market went. So those, those were great years and you know, if you were like George Adams and you happened to buy a shredder during that time and upgrade your shredder, um, you paid it off within the first year. So those were great. Not learning times, but great times to make some money learn. We learned a lot in 2008. That's exactly the hard way or the best way. What about pricing strategies because. Great to give a fixed price, that's wonderful. But then you take on all the risk. You both are excited about this one. How have you changed your pricing strategy now with this sort of volatility in play? My clients tend to be heavy LME users. Um, I have nothing against Comex personally. Of course, we trade on Comex as well. Um. But recently, the value of trading on Comex, if you look at the reports coming from, from the Federal Trade Commission, 80, 85% plus of the daily trading volumes on Comex contracts are done by financial institutions. AKA. People who are holding the notes of the paper but not actually trading the physical copper. Um, it, it is going to be very challenging for us in the physical market to be able to count against an index that quite frankly, no longer represents. What we are trying to accomplish. Um, LME buying is not perfect. Everybody remembers the Nico days when, uh, the market essentially shut down and there was no liquidity. So, uh, now we're trying to find a percentage that kind of tried to correlates between indexes that are completely outta whack. Uh, for us, this strategy has been to be able to tighten our payment terms for the clients and also put a lot more attention to our hedging positions. Course is still relying on LME. Absolutely. Echo that. You know, the, the three most beautiful words are the London Medal Exchange. You know, that's, uh, everyone's so used to Comex, but unfortunately with Trump, uh, and the threat of tariffs on copper, right? That's really what's driven the Comex by 50 cents or 80 cents, even above the LME. Every, it used to be at par with each other. And now Comex is, well, today it's about 40 cents, but it's gone up to between 40 and 80 cents up. And that's only because of the threat of maybe a 25% tariff on that. So if a 25% tariff does come into play, COMEX naturally goes up by 25% compared to the LME, which then makes export, uh, pretty much unviable because all the buyers and the world is pricing everything on the LME. And it's, it's the US suppliers that obviously know coms, right? You put a price in. People think you're crazy in the us They're like, that's not even in the market. Yeah, they're like, it is in the international market. Until the domestic suppliers get full, then every price is a good price because they don't have a place to sell. Sell the material. When there is no liquidity in the market, what is, what is the problem? Absolutely what's what anybody will pay you. It's what anybody would. Exactly. And you know the interesting thing is this arb, right? And suppliers still expect a comex spread. You know, that's what they're used to. But you coat a spread now and that spread is no longer valid after one minute because the arb between the Comex and the LME is literally changing by the minute. And with the margins that we make, we just have to keep a very close eye on that arbitrage between the two and do the trade accordingly. I, I think that there's also an educational component there, right? We're very used to, you know, again, when there is nothing changing to just quote, uh, comics, right? And when you start looking at underbelly of the Comex trading, where now only 10, 15% of the participants are physical traders. That's problematic. Uh, recently a friend of mine says, no comics can get even worse because now, uh, financial platforms like Robinhood can allow you to trade actually a partial contract of comics, which I did not believe it, but I actually downloaded the app. And indeed, you know, my 15-year-old teenager can buy, uh, you know, one 10th of, uh, a contract of, uh, the Comex market on the Robin Hood app. Which is, uh, I, I don't think that I will advise him to do that, or that's what I want him to be doing. I mean, it's a lot easier if it's just you, like it's easy when it's just you receiving the phone calls from your customers trying to buy material, but now you have a bunch of traders on the road that are having to go and fight your battle, your foot soldiers that are out there, you know. Getting told off that they don't know what they're doing or they're not competitive anymore. And you know, Greenland doesn't know what they're doing and this is the price thing. That must be really frustrating and that must be constantly fed back to you. Right. I, I, I just wish you were on one of our morning trader calls, you know, that have come on and with all of the questions that, that come up, you know, but no, it's, that's what we do every morning. We literally have, or not every morning, I would say maybe twice a week right? Or depending on what situation has come up. But we have the morning trader call and. Everyone's kind of on there, um, and asking their questions, you know, okay, what's, and we discuss the market, what's going on in China, what's going on in India, Pakistan, you know, in the US and Europe. Um, and then discuss the strategy for the weak, you know, and preempt the questions that the suppliers may ask the traders and come up with answers that make sense, or, you know, we may understand it, but sometimes it's even harder to explain the arbitrage between Comex and LME to someone who's sorting. Alternators, right? I mean, they may, they don't know what LME is. So how do you explain that in layman terms to, to someone like that? Is, is, is the real scale and I think the more communication that goes out and the more people talk and communicate with the suppliers, I think the better informed they are. So they don't think we are completely stupid. You know, when we, when we say. Something, I, I don't have the problem. I just switch to talking Spanish. And then that takes care of, that takes care of the whole thing. Um, no, uh, it, it can be some d difficult conversations. Um, I don't take any to personal. At the end of the day, uh, you're talking to somebody who is trying to place, uh, monetary contract with you, and they certainly are nervous because they look at the information just like we do. And that can certainly take a lot of emotion into the equation. Um, and we, we just try to, uh, make sure that we're not building any other emotional layer to that. And sometimes it's easier said than done, but, uh, at least that's our approach. How do you handle your long-term relationships? You might have suppliers. You know, I know a lot of people who supply Greenland and it's kind of like they supply you always the same commodity over and over. They rely on you. They get the best pricing from you. How do you manage your long-term relationships when all of a sudden people feel like you're not competitive anymore? That, that's a great question. You know, and I, I, I think again, it's about letting them know why the price is, what the price is, you know, right now, uh, the more information that we are able to exchange to them, I think that's really the only thing that can actually work. Uh, if it's not one commodity, you know, we do buy. 20 other commodities and it might not be possible always that we're gonna be competitive on all, on all the items. And in fact, sometimes for these long-term suppliers, we even tell them that, you know, you might be better off selling domestic, you know, you don't have to sell export, but we can buy the alternators and starters. But the copper, I think you'll be better off keeping it local, you know, and they, and or, or to Europe, you know? Of course. Um, and uh, and they appreciate that and I think that's what builds the trust and the relationship. With your long-term suppliers because then they value what you say, they trust what you say so that when the time comes right, you can get back in the game. Right. Yeah. Uh, has taken several layers of conversation, uh, at least for our dynamic. Uh, Europe has been a great provider of liquidity on the copper market the last two months, so we have found ourselves making a lot of new friends that we didn't know. Uh, fly as much before. Um, and we, we try to be very realistic also on where we can help them because we also have to partial our sales or purchasing base on our sales as well. And sometimes you cannot just take as much as you would like from a new, from a new supplier because you also wanna make sure that you are supporting those people who have supported you through the years as well. What do we think the impact of the war in India and Pakistan is going to have? Longer term? That's a loaded question. You know, this has been ongoing since, you know, 1947. But you know, the biggest risk with all of that is are the ports gonna remain open? You know, there was a, a rumor that, okay, this port is gonna shut down and that port is gonna shut down. That's a big risk. Second risk is, you know, with the financial condition in Pakistan is, are they gonna have dollars to, to remedy it? You know, is the, they did get an IMF bailout, which is great, but you just don't know what, what situation that's gonna be in. So it's important to limit the amount of business that you do with one particular customer because you have to diversify, you know, and try to spread your eggs in, in different baskets and not just keep it all in one place. Uh, but it's hard to avoid it completely unless the country itself shuts down. Yeah, sure. I mean, this obviously didn't pertain to you, so at least you have some, I I don't have much of the historical context that he has, but. Uh, as a general rule, when there is internal conflict of war or threat to work, it's never conductive to trading business. Yeah. And that's an element totally out of our control that it's really hard to manage from a risk standpoint. What sort of financial strategies are you guys using internally and recommended for customers at the moment? Whether it is teaching people to hedge for the first time, um, whether it is different payment terms that either you guys are pushing onto your traders to ensure that they're buying against. Or recommending to sellers manage your credit lines very carefully these days. Uh, with all these fluctuations in the market, 50 cents, 20 cents difference on the comex intra date can get away from you on your credit lines. Especially, uh, we like to remain very, very liquid, especially on these times because that's one of the things that we can offer. Um, and having good relationship with the banks is, is very key. A hundred percent agree. I mean, the margin calls can get pretty high, pretty quick. And if you're not managing that carefully, I think it can lead to a problem for sure. Uh, you know, in addition to that, for suppliers, I would say just, you know, same thing, right? I mean, buy and sell what you have. You don't have to speculate, you don't have to wait for that jump in the market, uh, to come in, you know, buy and sell what you have. If you're making a little bit of money, it's better to make that money than to try and go, you know, um, all out. Um, and then for, for buyers, check on the payment terms. Again, have a look at the payment terms. Make sure you get your advances on time because things are uncertain and you never know where the market is going to end up. So get your advances, diversify your risk. Push for the payments on time and, and measure it, right? I mean, it's, it's hard to, some you can just say, okay, yeah, he's paying. He's paying, but. Go with the data-driven approach. Look at the data is see the history of the customer for the last six months, you know, and actually see how many days from the due date is. Are they actually late or are they actually early? And the more data-driven approach I think you take, um, the better it is for sure. Yeah, I totally agree with that. How do you balance short-term survival and kind of medium long-term growth? Because we all want to grow, no doubt. At the same time, investing in things right now is maybe not the right strategy. What are you doing when you take that into consideration? I don't balance it, honestly. I think it's, it's an everyday thing, you know, for, for, for us. I mean, it's, it's, you know, yes, you're always thinking long term and you're always gonna think, okay, this is where I kind want to be. And you have your goal as to what you want to achieve maybe in a, in a 1, 2, 3 year timeframe. But I think the actions that you take today. 80% of it is driven by what's happening right now. And then 20% of that you can probably plan for, okay. How you kind of wanna meet your long-term objectives with that. Uh, but that 80% takes up 90% of your time, you know, and you don't have too much time. So it's a, it's, it's a tough one to balance, you know, and we kind of just play day by day and, uh, and have a, a longer term goal for sure. The harder the period you're going through, the more reactive you are. So when it's tough times, you become 90, 95% reactive. Yes. Hard to really strategize and plan for the future. Right. But it's kind of in the status quo where it's like, actually I can react to 50% of the stuff, 50% of my brain power needs to now go to growth and, and strategy for the future. How do you, how do you deal with it? Well, for, for us it's is probably an, an easier thing to approach us because we are a much smaller office and, and team. Right. I like to say that we are spend a lot of time cross training and developing different products when. Probably there is an opportunity for us that we don't see as much flow of trade on those opportunities. It, it gets harder as the organization grows itself and you need more resources. Right? So for right now, for us, we're, we're very flexible. We do a lot of cross training, um, and we also develop different products that can serve other people. Uh, probably January, February, March, uh, we talk about more about insurance coverage and hedging internally than we ever done before. Because the trading part was certainly very challenging. Michelle, you, you said you want to use as much data as possible. You guys are both buyers on Buddy at the moment, so that's fantastic. There's nowhere near the liquidity to give you guys the amount of data you want yet on Buddy. So you guys are buying hell of a lot of your material, obviously the majority of it off, buddy. What other technology, what technology are you using to help you actually bring that to the forefront when you're actually looking to make better decisions? So right now we actually have our own internal ERP system that, uh, that my wife has developed about 20 years ago, you know, with us. And, and that's working great, you know, and we feed in all the data into that, all the purchase orders, sales orders, bookings, invoices, packing lists, accounting, everything is kind of in that ERP system. And we have historic data for like 20 years, you know, so for us, we can pull that information out pretty quickly. Um. From a supplier level to a product level, to the country level, you know, in whichever way you wanna slice that, that data and then try to analyze it, right? And, and profitability by product, by country in a certain timeframe. You know, you can kind of look at all of those things and we do, you know, and I think different. Products work in different countries at different times, you know, and you really have to look at your margins. Um, also, and, uh, I think we just download the data from our ERP and, and use that. If you could get a, and you can very, very easily create your own GPT to overlook over, um, all your data, that historical data that is so powerful to be able to just type into something, you know, based on my previous 20 years. What is my average, whatever it could be, claims, whatever it is, right? Or data on a specific customer, on a specific commodity. You'll hear people talk about data is the new oil, and there's a really good reason for that because everybody's ai, ai, AI is nothing without data. Like you could put something in and request some information from chat, GPT. Without the data feeding it, it can't answer it, it can't go. And look, if it looks at nothing, it'll give you nothing. You have that data and that is super powerful. No, the using AI to, to do what you say is probably the next thing. Right. And I think, you know, I'm probably too old, but I can get my 15-year-old son to kind of get onto that chat g pt, and make that bot. I think he'll do a much better job than I ever. With, I got a teenager at home. He's great with. I can help with that. My, my wife can do it for you in 15 minutes. She's, it's, it's easy. It's super duper. It's super powerful. It's easy. It's amazingly powerful. Right. Um, what do you doing? Uh, I, I rely a lot on the Microsoft environment because we work with, uh, large clients that are usually on Microsoft environment. Uh, the data analytics options that we have also usually through dynamics, uh, are pretty good for us. Um, and it has definitely been very helpful. Help us. You know, kind of anticipate these changes in the market. If we see a drop of 15 cents in Comex or LME, we know that so many people will react to the market and hitch and we will need certain, uh, credit line positions or margin calls. Um, that component has, uh, for us, been really helpful. Actually, sorry, I just thought about it quickly. You know what would be super powerful with all that data, and I'm not sure if you have this, you might not. It's trickier if you could have all the live LME feed. That's tracking against all the data you have, which is quite easy'cause GGBT could pull all that information. If you could take all of that, which could then correlate them against each other, it would be, you could see your history and what you expect the market's gonna do in, he's already thinking about the next business. Oh, I'm excited. Throw in the Comex and throw in the arb, you know, to track everything kind of thing. I think it's fantastic coming there. There's a lot of, we'll, we'll talk, we can go far down this rabbit so we won't right now. Um, how are you? Keeping your team motivated. We spoke earlier, like they gotta be super frustrated. The guys on the front line definitely are more frustrated than you guys in the back. You might think it's hard, but the ones that are speaking to the customers and getting door slammed in their faces and bones put down on them, how do you keep these guys motivated? Well, you know, a lot of my team is here and, uh, I, I think, you know, they'll be the best position to answer that. But I think, uh, I think it's self-motivation and I think I'm just fortunate enough to have a team that. Self-motivated. Uh, they've been in the business a while. They understand that frustrations can creep in very quickly and staying calm in, in, in uncertain waters and uncertain, unchartered territory is kind of the mantra. You know, you take that deep breath and then talk to your customer and explain what they do, and, and I think my team does a good job with that. In, in doing that, I, I would like to think for us, is we, we like to emphasize. That the goal doesn't change. We're there to provide a service. We're there to help people navigate, uh, a very difficult transaction with the information and the expertise that we have. And certainly sometimes, you know, it's very personal for them and I can understand that. Why, uh, is their livelihoods? Some of those is their financial cash flow. Um, and they count on us to be able to have like a steady hand to be able to remove the emotion as you most, as you can. Um, and go from it. Look, motivating your team is, is just so vital, right? I mean, they're your front line. They're the ones that are facing the customers every day. Um, and I can just imagine actually going through it over the last few months. You know, I'm, I've been customer facing for the last few months as well. It's tough. It's really tough. So, motivating your team is, is absolutely vital. I just wanted, we're gonna run out of time, so I wanted to ask, you know, one last question. I like to ask this in Born Scrappy. You guys have both been on Born Scrappy, my podcast as well. If you could give one piece of advice for somebody new in the industry or less experienced in the industry currently going through volatile markets, what would that one piece of advice be? I think, um, you know, I think the advice is to stay resilient. You know, you're going to have good times, you're gonna have bad times. And if you are not resilient in both times, you know, I think it's, uh, you know, it's, it's a short-lived industry because this industry can be, it can be very demanding, but at the same time, it can be very rewarding as well. And as long as you are, you know, that, that poem by rudyard clipping, right? Um, treat imposters and people just the same, right? Or in, in times of distress and in times of happiness. If you can maintain your balance right in exactly what you do, I. And go into that zen mode and stay consistent. I think people appreciate you in this industry. If you're, if you're someone new wanting to get out in this industry over the long term, I think it's resilience because you're gonna see both good and bad times for sure. Is that, are you, is that from the poem? If, if There you go. Sorry. That, that's what I would, thank you. Thank you. Yes. You'll be a man, my son. Yes, exactly. Exactly. I used to work under a, a pretty, uh, significant mentor on the scrap business on my side, and he would always say, these two shall pass. Um, we will see another day and things will improve and one day we'll forget all about it and we'll think about what, what was that happening in 2025? Um, the other thing is a great opportunity to service, service, service. Uh, people wanna get in the phone with somebody, they want to be able to have an answer. Um, it's a great opportunity to learn. I had the pleasure to meet in this trade with many, many people understand from energy trading to many things that certainly affect, but it's a great opportunity to learn as well. Yeah. And also just, sorry, just, just like you know, you had a mentor. I had a mentor also, and so get a mentor. You know, if there's someone new in the industry, I think that is, that's a heaps of knowledge that can come to you. You have someone to go to, uh, when you have questions. I think that's so important. In this industry. Yeah, it's a great advice and you heard it Care Live on Born Scrappy, Vishal and Aldo are offering their time to be everybody's mentors'cause you have so much spare time now. So that's very cool if you, their phone number is six eight two five eight two. Just kidding. Alright guys, that's been awesome. Um, we've ran out time. Thanks so much for coming on with us guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys.
