Antonio Carrillo
Management
Thank you, Julio. It's a really good question. And we have never done it before. First of all, this is for hopper barges, and we've only done it for hopper barges. And there's a whole reason for why, but for hopper barges, historically, the difference between coil and plate is somewhere between – depending on the time, $100, $150. That's the historical difference between the two products. And when you make the numbers, you have to increase your labor content to substitute coil for plate. When you do the numbers with that a small difference, it's tight. So, it has never made a lot of sense to put a lot of money and time behind us. When the pandemic hit, steel prices go down, and then they go nuts. And 2022 historically has been the year with the most volatility in steel prices in history based on – that's what CRU published a few months ago. And what happened is that plate prices stayed high at $2,000 or so, and coil prices started falling real fast in the second quarter of last year, second or third quarter of last year. So, by September, October, the gap between those two prices was enormous, almost $1,000. And then we set our team in barge to start redesigning the barges to take advantage of that and be able to offer our customers a margin that's just as good as a plate barge, just with some more wells. When you see the barge, it has a few more wells, but it's exactly the same quality of product with no disadvantages at all. It's just you have to put more wells in it. So, you put more labor. So, we launched our first barge in December with coil, and customers liked it and immediately started to place orders. So, coil prices have come up a little bit again. So, right now, we are not selling many more of them, but what's important about this is, two things. First, I think we reacted to market conditions. Second, now we have flexibility. Depending on steel prices, we can modulate and decide how we build the barge with coil or plate. And third, it also gives us negotiating strength with our steel suppliers, depending on plate and coil prices. So, I think it's a really good development. And let's see where steel prices come, but I think this allows us to move between two very complicated markets, let's say.