Above: KORE Machinery technicians worked on site with Ace Steel Supply’s technicians to install a 60-inch-wide slitting line.
November, 2025- The Peloponnesian League, Lennon and McCartney, Proctor & Gamble, Rodgers and Hammerstein, NATO— the value of partnerships and strategic alliances has been proven over millennia. Such associations prove very helpful in situations where each party is seeking to achieve significant, and often mutual, goals.
For Ace Steel Supply, the goal is to expand its capabilities to better serve a sophisticated customer base and improve profits. For KORE Machinery, the goal is to provide the North American metals industry with equipment it can deliver quickly and affordably.
Ace Steel Supply just relocated its service center to a larger (60,000-square-foot) facility in early October and has installed a KORE Machinery-built slitting line.
“Our business structure, since our origin 20 years ago, had us 100 percent reliant on outside toll processors,” says COO and Executive Vice President Bruce Margolin. “We have established a good book of business, but our clients need quicker turnaround. The toll processor marketplace regionally is limited and lead times are drawn out—up to 21 days, and then it takes extra days to get that finished material out of the toll processor’s facility. So we decided to commit to our own slitting line, controlling our own destiny and managing the timeline to take on additional business and perform to customers’ requirements,” he says.
In his travels, Margolin met KORE Machinery’s Tyler Icenogle, national sales and marketing director. At the time, Margolin’s team was performing due diligence around buying a slitter. “We entertained domestic, European and equipment from the Far East, and even refurbished lines.”
The new slitter means Ace Steel Supply won’t have to rely on long lead times from outside processors.
Ace’s team “found the KORE design very attractive, and they promised us lead time of 12 months. We even put a provision in the contract incentivizing timely delivery. Their lead time was almost a third of the domestic equipment builders, and the price point was extremely competitive including ocean freight and tariffs.”
Ace Steel Supply has begun slitting carbon and stainless steel coils at its new facility.
Margolin acknowledges that “we had an unexpected tariff increase between order placement and arrival, which we had to absorb, but that was far from a deal killer because we are still far ahead financially when compared to sourcing a domestic line.”
SPECIFICATIONS
The KORE line has a maximum entry width of 60 inches and handles coils up to 25 tons. The thickness range is from 0.012 to 3/16 inch.
Ace has begun slitting carbon steel cold-rolled, pickled and oiled, galvanized, Galvanneal, Galvalume, bonderized and stainless steel. “Initially, like any startup, we are running the line eight hours, five days a week. Our 2026 sales plan is called ‘Fill the Line.’ We need to fill that line and everyone wants to get to a second shift.”
PERFORMANCE
“The quality is superb,” Margolin says. “The construction and everything else is done to the highest level of expertise—from layout to electrical, positioning, and the integration of video cameras with screens to provide a visual representation of surface condition and production quality. Whenever you commission a line, issues pop up, but KORE stood behind every single challenge.”
At first, Ace Steel Supply planned to use a third party for installation, but KORE Machinery’s team decided they wanted to manage it themselves to ensure quality and streamline the process. “Jimmy [Tsai] has been here twice for several weeks at a time,” working with the electricians, IT experts, machinery technicians and Ace’s own team. technicians and Ace’s own team. KORE completed the installation and ran the first coil less than 30 days after their arrival.
BRUCE MARGOLIN, ACE STEEL SUPPLY
Margolin also credits JD Concrete Enterprise LLC, Erie, Michigan, for installing the 30-foot looping pit and foundations. “They were on time and on budget and tremendous to work with,” he says. The foundation was completed in August. It took two months to commission the sli er and “it is now mid-October and we are already producing coils for our customers.”
The distributor primarily services manufacturers of HVAC equipment, such as air purification units, building products companies, door and hardware manufacturers, fabricators, and others.
AUTOMATION
Margolin says the new slitter has “very current” technology but that Ace Steel is investigating the possibility of additional automation, including robotics.
“We have two slitter heads and so far, changeover is an electro-over-hydraulic control.” Ace has also purchased a refurbished packaging line and will add automation to that as it is integrated into the slitting line. “We are an up-and-coming company that has assembled a tremendous group of people,” Margolin says. “We think that sets us apart. We are customer focused, and we do what we say we’re going to do.”
PRESS PLAY
Jimmy Tsai is one of the managing partners of KORE Machinery and also owns Toptran Machinery Co. Ltd. “I am the third generation,” he says. “Our first generation was my grandfather, who designed and built press machines, and owned Stamtec. He later le Stamtec and began working on the coil feed business in 1997.”
When Tsai joined the family business 10 years ago, his first accomplishment was to acquire a company, GIO, which was selling steel processing equipment to China Steel, Baosteel and other major mills in Asia. Tsai says they employ around 50 people just in “design and innovation,” including up to 15 engineers. Over time, Tsai redirected the bulk of the company’s manufacturing activity from press feed to coil processing equipment.
Just before the COVID pandemic broke out, Tsai helped form KORE Machinery, based in Dover, Delaware. To date, Kore is on track to install six to seven lines in the United States over the next 12- plus months. The slitting line at Ace Steel Supply is the first of its kind for KORE. The equipment builder also has a rotary shear/cut-to-length line installed in the Midwest and is in the process of installing a fully automated sheet and plate packaging line retrofit in the Southeast.
“We want to build better equipment and provide the best on-the-ground support,” Tsai says. “This is not just a trading company. We are transforming our coil processing machines to a North American standard. It is a different machine from those we supply to Asia. Every little system and subsystem is for the North American market.”
From the new customers KORE has worked with here, “we have received very good positive responses. They like our machines and service very much. They appreciate the build quality and they say that the machine is heavier duty than they expected.
“For automation,” Tsai says, “we offer a lot of features. We partner with Siemens and Bosch Rexroth,” among other European automation experts. American customers are demanding higher efficiencies, including regenerative functionality and more automation, in their coil processing lines. They are also asking about machine learning and AI.
“We want to be smart manufacturing expert,” says Tsai. “That has put us in a good position to compete with rest of the automated machine OEMs.” Another advantage, he claims, is “we have the industry’s best lead times. Some are three to four years out, and we are about one year out, sometimes less depending on the line.”
KORE + ACE
Ace Steel Supply is also seeking high efficiency with the new slitter. “They wanted offline setups and to eventually run the line continuously,” Tsai says. “They want to minimize operator hours. With the new line, a lot of setup time is reduced and there is a low amount of downtime.
“We are developing robotic tooling and, with that, Ace should be able to run lights out,” Tsai says. “Everything we did for Ace is operation ready. While building a line, we cannot always place all the automation all at once. Clients are able to add that later” with little interruption in production.
With the packaging line, for example, Ace Steel will receive automated pick-and-place capability and the ability to tilt slit coils 90 degrees for packaging. “This is their first slitter and once they have everything running, we will go for a fully automatic packaging system,” Tsai says.
Ace Steel Supply, 832/300-1030, acesteelsupply.com
KORE Machinery, 833/201-0887, koremachinery.com
JD Concrete Enterprises LLC, 734/856-6682, jdconc.com
