Resilience – Systematically Strengthening a Key Success Factor in Times of Increasing Exogenous Shocks: The Competitive Business Model Metals (CBM.M) by Bronk & Company
For more than a decade, Bronk & Company has supported clients across the metals industry in addressing strategic and operational challenges. Our annual industry forum “Metal Meets” clearly illustrates how shifting priorities — such as green transformation, performance optimisation, digitalisation and artificial intelligence — continue to shape the sector. In addition to these long‑term trends, companies are repeatedly exposed to short‑term changes in their external environment.
Crises such as the COVID‑19 pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the ongoing trade disputes with the United States, and the current conflict involving Iran, the US and Israel have had a significant impact on financial performance across the industry. Companies that are able to preserve value creation during such disruptions — or restore it rapidly afterwards — are commonly described as resilient.
For decision‑makers, this raises the question of how to prepare their organisations for such events over the long term — and which strategic capabilities are required to mitigate negative impacts and emerge from crises stronger and faster. In response to this challenge within metals production, we developed the Competitive Business Model Metals (CBM.M).
Our Approach
We believe that companies must demonstrate two fundamental capabilities to cope successfully with crises: robustness and adaptability.
Robust business models are less affected by external shocks such as supply chain disruptions, volatile energy prices, or demand weaknesses in specific customer segments. Adaptable organisations, on the other hand, actively seek and leverage opportunities arising from change. They build flexible, cross‑functional teams, continuously scan for new markets, and maintain a strong pipeline of new products and solutions.
Top performers in the metals industry show a more advanced development of both capabilities compared to their peers. They deliberately work on being robust and adaptable at the same time — activating the right levers to turn crises into opportunities for strengthening their competitive position.
For the CBM.M, we quantitatively assessed the maturity level of more than 40 companies across the steel, aluminium and copper industries with regard to the robustness and adaptability of their business models. For benchmarking purposes, we additionally grouped producers of so‑called performance alloys — including nickel‑, cobalt‑ and titanium‑based materials — which, despite smaller tonnages, generate highly relevant revenues.
This allows the CBM.M to provide a clear positioning of a company’s crisis resilience — both against direct competitors and across the major materials segments of the metals industry.
Figure 1 shows the positioning of companies within the CBM.M matrix. The axes display normalised scores for adaptability and robustness; the respective industries are colour‑coded. Marker size reflects company size across three revenue‑based categories.
Data Basis and Methodology
The data foundation of the model is based on information published by the companies themselves — in annual reports, press releases, technical publications and sustainability disclosures — as well as insights from trade press articles and selected interview‑based key figures.
For each company’s KPI set, we determine a data quality index indicating the reliability of the positioning within the CBM.M matrix. This index reflects both the number and the quality of available data points ranging from interview‑based and reliably published figures down to calculated or estimated values. In Figure 1, data quality is visualised through transparency: the higher the data reliability, the more “solid” the plotted data point appears.
Through score normalisation, we ensure that large, reporting‑intensive companies with extensive public disclosures do not automatically receive higher scores than smaller organisations for which less information is typically available.
Beyond comparative positioning, the CBM.M enables the identification of relevant strategic action fields for improving resilience. From a broad set of influencing factors affecting robustness and adaptability, we selected a portfolio of 31 KPIs across 8 categories that logically drive these two dimensions within the metals industry.
Figure 2 shows the distribution of evaluated values across these categories for all companies analysed to date. On average, we observe strong scores in “traditional” disciplines such as market diversification and risk management, while agility & innovation as well as liquidity & capital structure show comparatively lower average ratings.
A key insight from the overall analysis is that no company achieves top scores across all KPIs—represented by values close to 1 on the normalised scales—leaving the “champions” quadrant in Figure 1 largely unoccupied. Each organisation clearly shows its own priorities, strengths and development areas. The CBM.M therefore supports a differentiated drill‑down—from category level down to individual KPIs—allowing us to quickly identify the most effective levers and to support strategy development through targeted prioritisation.
For selected KPIs—such as CO₂ emissions per euro of revenue, inventory coverage, or personnel productivity measured as employees per € EBITDA—we observe particularly interesting comparisons across companies and materials segments. These insights will be explored in more detail in future publications.
Summary
The Competitive Business Model Metals (CBM.M) is a consistent and structured assessment framework that provides targeted guidance for the further development of business models and supports the strategic strengthening of resilience in the metals industry.
Call to Action
If you would like to understand where your company stands—and which concrete action fields derive from this assessment—please get in touch with us. The CBM.M not only provides a clear benchmark positioning, but also drills down to concrete starting points to strengthen robustness and adaptability and to future‑proof your strategy.
An interview and a compact questionnaire (approx. 1–2 hours) serve as the entry points to determine your CBM.M positioning and to receive an anonymised comparison to peers, along with a detailed evaluation across categories and KPIs.
If you have any questions please contact info@bronk-company.com.
Your contact:
Dr. Jan Hecht,
Manager
