Steel away.

• Author: Cary, Michael
• Position: SouthStar Steel Chmn. Klaus Becker

German-born Klaus Becker shows his metal in Charlotte by becoming the top U.S. importer of stainless-steel bars.

I am the antichrist," Klaus Becker declares in a crisp German accent, his voice shifting between agitation and amusement. "That's what they think of me, anyway. They are wary of my success."

It's late afternoon. Becker, chairman of Charlotte-based SouthStar Steel Corp., is giving an informal tour of the distributor's Queen City warehouse and a mini-rant about competitors. The German national strides past rows and rows of stainless-steel rods, bars and plates - "more than 2,000 types," he boasts. It's all imported. SouthStar buys it from plants in Europe, Asia and Brazil and ships it to the company's five warehouses. It's sold for a tidy profit to U.S. steel service centers, which cut and mold the steel for manufacturers that make it into containers and machine parts.

About 2 million tons of stainless steel are sold in the United States every year, compared with more than 100 million tons of the carbon variety. Unlike carbon steel, used mainly in construction, stainless steel contains alloys such as nickel and chromium that prevent rusting and corrosion. It's more expensive to produce but fetches a much higher price. Becker figures he can sell his bars and rods for seven times what he could sell carbon versions for.

It has been a lucrative niche for SouthStar, whose sales this year should hit $100 million, up 20% from last year and nine times what it posted five years ago. Becker expects the company to sell about 25,000 tons this year, more than six times what it sold in 1993. According to him, that makes SouthStar the top U.S. importer of stainless-steel bars.

His formula is simple. He runs a lean business that operates out of a nondescript building in one of Charlotte's grittier warehouse districts. He hires mostly young employees who favor incentive-laden salaries over lavish perks. And he provides services to foreign manufacturers - wading through international red tape, waiving minimum orders, mapping out cheap distribution routes, picking up shipping costs, converting kilograms to pounds - that most U.S. distributors won't touch.

"See, I bought these round bars from a small mill in Italy," Becker says, pointing to a shelf by the warehouse's rear wall. "They never tried to do business in America before I came along because it was too intimidating. They didn't speak the language, didn't understand the rules. So I took care of all the details: shipping, letters of credit, U.S. distribution. All they have to do is produce the steel."

If it all sounds too scripted, this soliloquy on the Little Italian Mill That Could, it's only because we have hit a nerve with Becker, a 45-year-old native of Marburg, Germany, who favors Italian suits, five-course dinners and muscle-bound cars he can hurl 100 miles-an-hour down the autobahn during his frequent trips back to the Fatherland.

That nerve is touched by talk of U.S. steel makers and distributors, who he says favor trade restrictions over hard work. Among Becker's chief headaches: frequent attempts by domestic-industry leaders to slow the practice of "dumping," in which foreign steel makers sell products in the United States at a loss or for less than they charge in their own countries. It's a violation of international fair-trade laws established two decades ago.

More than two dozen complaints were filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission between Sept. 30, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, according to a Wall Street Journal story Becker keeps at his desk. That was more than 80% of the ITC's docket that year, though steel accounts for less than 5% of all imports.

Even the $4.5 billion-a-year U.S. stainless-steel industry, which just a few years ago depended on imports to help fill consumer demand, has launched a flurry of complaints. In 1992, the ITC filed cases against India, Brazil and Italy for dumping stainless-steel wire. A year...