P&Q Profile: Conn-Weld’s Marvin Woodie

P&Q recently had the opportunity to tour Conn-Weld Industries’ facilities in Princeton, West Virginia, where company president Marvin Woodie discussed supply chain dynamics, the mood of the market and more.

We’ve heard from some dealers who are looking to manufacturers to expand their capacity, produce more product and, ultimately, rightsize the supply chain. Do you agree that this needs to take place on the manufacturing front? Is it on manufacturers to get everything back to where they were pre-COVID? Are we already moving in that direction?

I can speak for Conn-Weld: What we did was prepare. We hedged on the supply chain side with raw material. We always had a certain amount of inventory in stock to get us through the lean times with raw material – specifically metal, plate steel, structural shapes. I do believe that helped Conn-Weld through the pandemic issue with supply chain.

There were other factors that affected our ability to ship on time and deliver to the end user correctly. Those being finished goods like bearings, springs, gears and castings.

That became an issue for us, but I do believe those are back on track.

The foundries are probably back to operating better than they did pre-COVID. The bearings suppliers are not. For some reason, they don’t seem to have a supply chain in place to get back to optimal production and delivery schedules. I don’t think they’re anywhere near where they need to be as far as satisfying customers’ needs. All that filters through the manufacturer who supplies to the end user.

I do believe the country is going to see some accelerated growth in manufacturing. I believe the transportation infrastructure bill has given the construction industry enough confidence to spend money – and spend properly on highways, bridges, construction material projects that will need aggregates, cement, concrete, asphalt – and I do believe any manufacturer that supplies to those industries is going to see a nice upturn in business for the next three or four years.

Let’s talk about capex projects and what 2024 is looking like. On the aggregate side, what’s the mood like and what are you seeing in terms of interest and order placements?

With capex jobs, I think the major producers are cautiously optimistic. There was huge optimism last year after we felt like COVID was through. There was a big push to start capex jobs.

This year, because we hear about the cost of money and interest rates going up, the monetary side may limit the growth we saw last year. But I think the market is cautiously optimistic.

I think in the next two to three years, we’re still going to see growth but not as rapid as what we’ve seen the past few years. It’s still a good place to be.

We hear a lot more today about this notion that if you don’t have it, you can’t sell it. Still, not everybody’s necessarily adopted this mindset. Is this mindset the prevailing one? Is it the only approach to doing business?

I think there are other ways to do it. You can make an investment in your raw materials to the point where you feel confident you can sell the raw materials into a finished product, with optimism in your sales force to go out there and allow the customer to understand what your advantages are. If our salespeople can convey that to the customer, then we win – regardless of some of the issues in the marketplace right now.

Conn-Weld serves other industries aside from aggregates (i.e., food, metal, paper and pulp). How is aggregates holding up against your other markets?

It’s very strong. We’re seeing some great gains in our market share in the aggregate industry, as well as a lot of projects being done. Our involvement in those is growing, as well.

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