Process loss in the melt
Steel plants record up to 34% melt material loss without digital control. The inefficiency compounds with every heat and erodes the operation's gross margin.
Fu et al. / Zhejiang Univ.-Springer 2024Metals and Steel Industry
The heat runs. The LME premium is negotiated without yield visibility. Margin evaporates between plant and contract.
Steel companies that integrate metallic yield, grade, and commercial portfolio capture 6–8 p.p. more EBITDA. Bunker connects the heat, premium, and take-or-pay with the Bunker Protocol, Salesforce, and AI.
Steel Industry & Metals by the numbers
34%→7,8%
reduction in melt material loss with digital twin; +77.7% productive capacity
Fu et al. / Zhejiang Univ.-Springer 2024US$126/t
in avoidable error in copper price forecasting with wavelet-ARIMA
Kriechbaumer et al. / Resources Policy 20145–6%
productivity gap without data-driven decisions; 4–8% in US manufacturing
Brynjolfsson & McElheran / AER 2016The silent risk in metals and the steel industry
Up to 12% of revenue destroyed every year by poor-quality data. Does your operation know where it is losing margin?
When commercial, production, and logistics operate with disconnected systems, every negotiation happens without consolidated context. The result is margin silently eroded: contract by contract, order by order.
The real picture
Four fractures that erode margin with every heat and premium negotiation
Every gap compounds heat after heat. When metallic yield doesn't communicate with the portfolio and the LME premium is issued without governance, margin evaporates - and take-or-pay becomes a liability.
Price forecasting error
Without predictive models, the average error in copper forecasting reaches US$126 per tonne. In high-volume portfolios, that represents millions in lost margin per quarter.
Kriechbaumer et al. / Resources Policy 2014Productivity gap without data
Operations that do not make data-driven decisions run 5–6% below their productivity potential. In the steel industry, that gap translates into tonnes wasted every month.
Brynjolfsson & McElheran / AER 2016Revenue eroded by poor data
Poor-quality data destroys 8% to 12% of annual revenue in manufacturing. The effect is cumulative and invisible in quarterly reports.
Redman / ACM 1998Integrated Metallurgical Architecture
Bunker
We have already mapped LME premium, metallic yield, and product grade. We know where context is lost between the heat and the commercial portfolio.
The commercial team negotiates the premium without knowing the yield from the last heat. Each plant manages take-or-pay with its own priority rules. Product grade changes between order and delivery and no one tracks the pricing impact. And the account manager closes contracts in Excel because the MES doesn't talk to the CRM.
We don't sell MES or ERP. We design the operation that turns every heat into traceable margin - with premium governance and end-to-end yield visibility.
- +300 CRM projects: including steel companies and metallurgical firms with premium negotiation
- +120K users impacted, from commercial negotiation to technical support and logistics
- Commercial governance deployed in 8 countries with industrial metals operations
- Direct experience in steelmaking, specialty metallurgy, and alloys
Bunker Protocol applied to Metals
Four phases. One architecture. Auditable results.
Evidence
Auditable results in a context similar to yours
+6–8 p.p.
in incremental EBITDA at steel companies that integrate heat data, yield, and commercial portfolio with premium governance
McKinsey: "Metals and mining digital" 2023US$70–80M
in annual impact captured by Tata Steel with analytics integrated across plant, commercial, and logistics
McKinsey: "Tata Steel digital transformation" 2022−10–15%
reduction in operational costs with AI applied to heat scheduling, yield forecasting, and grade optimization
Deloitte: "Smart factory for metals" 2024Ferro Norte: national manufacturer with a mixed in-house and independent sales channel, B2B operation and customer-advocacy running in silos, with discounts approved by email and no consolidated order view.
Bunker implemented Salesforce Sales, Service and partner portal, with active bidirectional integrations across ERP, DMS and Salesforce, a governed discount-approval process and billing delivery via WhatsApp.
Request access to additional information on this and other cases compatible with your context.
Request a compatible caseTransformation
From fragmented heats to a connected margin architecture
Without Bunker
Heat disconnected from the portfolio
- Commercial and production operating on separate data with conflicting versions
- Contracts with no link to execution and delivery history
- Pricing negotiated without centralized portfolio governance
- Pipeline invisible to executive management
- Supply decisions without traceability of margin impact
With Bunker
Integrated margin architecture
- Single view of customer, contract, and order across commercial and production
- Contracts connected to CRM with end-to-end traceability
- Pricing governance with visibility by account and region
- Auditable pipeline with real-time executive predictability
- AI applied to daily routines with alerts, summaries, and action recommendations
Every month of heats without premium governance costs yield, margin, and contracts that don't come back.
The first step is a portfolio and metallurgical pricing diagnosis. No commitment, no generic deck. Assess whether your operation justifies a different margin architecture.
Frequently asked questions
Answers for Metals and the Steel Industry
01 Does the protocol work for both steel companies and specialty metallurgical firms? Expand
It works for both. The protocol structure is the same: diagnosis, architecture, activation, governance. The specificity comes from the commercial cycle: steelmaking operates with volume contracts and LME premium; specialty firms with technical specification and qualification cycles. The diagnosis captures that difference.
02 Do you integrate with MES, ERP, and production systems? Expand
We integrate Salesforce with ERP, MES, and production and quality data. The commercial team can then negotiate with visibility into yield, capacity, and the production pipeline - eliminating price concessions caused by lack of information.
03 What is the impact when negotiation is based on the LME premium? Expand
The premium is where margin is made or lost. When the commercial team negotiates without visibility into the actual heat yield and delivery capacity, it concedes margin unnecessarily. The protocol connects production data to the commercial pipeline so every negotiation has context.