Hilco Sparrows Point FAQ

It was first purchased by Bethlehem Steel in 1916 and, at one time, was the largest steel mill in the United States. Over the years, the facility supplied steel for the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and hundreds of ships for World War II. Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and Sparrows Point has had four owners since then. OAO Severstal paid $810 million for Sparrows Point in 2008. RG Steel bought the mill and other plants from Severstal in 2011.

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The facility is located in a strategically important position on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of Baltimore Harbor. The facility includes its own port with access to the Atlantic Ocean capable of docking deep-water vessels. Sparrows Point also has its own short-line railroad, which has over 160 miles of track and connects to both CSX and Norfolk Southern.

It includes the second largest blast furnace in North America and is the only fully-integrated facility on the East Coast capable of producing flat rolled steel. Sparrows Point has the capacity to be one of the top three tin producers in North America. In the years prior to its recent shutdown, Sparrows Point demonstrated annual capacity of 3.6 million tons of crude steel, 2.9 million tons of hot rolled, 1.3 million tons of cold rolled, 480 thousand tons of coated and 470 thousand tons of tin.

• a sinter plant
• one operating blast furnace with pulverized coal injection
• two basic oxygen furnaces
• two straight mould continuous casters
• one hot strip mill
• one continuous pickler linked tandem cold mill
• two active hot dip galvanizing lines
• 22 hydrogen batch anneal bases
• one temper/tension mill
• one self-contained tin mill operation*

*The tin mill operation consists of one pickle line, one tandem mill, one continous anneal line, one electrolytic cleaning line, twelve batch anneal bases, one temper mill, one duo (DCR) mill and two electro-plating lines.

HRE Sparrows Point, LLC is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois (USA). Hilco is a privately-held, diversified financial and operational services firm whose principal competency is understanding and maximizing the value of business assets, including retail, consumer and industrial inventory; machinery and equipment; real estate; accounts receivable; intellectual property; and going-concern enterprises. Through 500 professionals operating on five continents, Hilco helps companies and their professional advisors assess asset value, maximize value for said assets through asset monetization solutions, and enhance value through advisory and consulting solutions. Hilco serves retailers, wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers, directly and through their lenders, investors and advisors, including private equity firms, hedge funds, investment banks, law firms, turnaround professionals, accounting professionals, bankruptcy trustees and receivers.

Environmental Liability Transfer, Inc. is a member of the Commercial Development Company, Inc. (CDC) family of businesses. CDC is a leading North American real estate development firm specializing in the development, acquisition and redevelopment of major commercial and industrial sites. Since 1985, CDC has acquired over twenty million square feet under roof. As a byproduct of its pursuits, CDC has also acquired, indemnified and alleviated over three-quarters of a billion dollars of environmental liabilities. Major clients such as Caterpillar, General Motors, Textron, Kraft General Foods, Uniroyal, Kaiser Aluminum, G. Heileman Breweries, Fruit of the Loom, PMX, ABB, Sanvick Millford, Millennium Chemicals and many more have effectively transferred and disposed of environmental liabilities through CDC programs. In response to the increasing corporate demand for environmental liability transference, CDC has launched its affiliate, Environmental Liability Transfer, Inc.