solid deal in steel: Steel Dynamics purchased Companhia Siderurgica Nacional LLC’s plant in the Vigo County Industrial Park in late June of 2018, giving it the ability to expand its annual flat roll steel shipping capacity. Steel Dynamics Inc. plans to expand its manufacturing facility in the Vigo County Industrial Park and add 84 employees. Staff photo by Joseph C. Garza
solid deal in steel: Steel Dynamics purchased Companhia Siderurgica Nacional LLC’s plant in the Vigo County Industrial Park in late June of 2018, giving it the ability to expand its annual flat roll steel shipping capacity. Steel Dynamics Inc. plans to expand its manufacturing facility in the Vigo County Industrial Park and add 84 employees. Staff photo by Joseph C. Garza
• •
Steel Dynamics Inc. plans to expand its manufacturing facility in the Vigo County Industrial Park and add 84 employees.

The company is eyeing an investment of about $231 million for its Steel Dynamics Heartland LLC facility in Terre Haute, which includes constructing a 390,000-square-foot expansion of its cold roll steel plant at a cost of $196.35 million and installing $34.65 million in new equipment.

The company next week will seek 10-year tax abatement from the Vigo County Council on both the proposed new building and equipment.

The project is slated to create 84 new jobs at an estimated annual wage of $80,000, plus benefits, according to its tax abatement filing before the Vigo County Council.

Additionally, the company, located at 455 W. Industrial Drive, would retain 226 employees with annual salary at $21.6 million. Those jobs have an average annual wage of $95,575, according to its tax abatement filing before the County Council.

The new equipment includes adding a galvanizing line and paint line, cranes, water treatment equipment, rail and scrap yard, plus mobile equipment and coil handling equipment.

Telephone messages seeking comment left for Roberto Bohrer, operations manager for the Terre Haute plant, and with David Lipschitz, director of investor relations, at Steel Dynamics corporate office in Fort Wayne, were not returned.

In a July 15 letter submitted to the Vigo County Council, Steve Witt, president of the Terre Haute Economic Development Corp., said the corporation fully supports the requested 10-year property tax abatement, for both property and equipment.

“As a bit of background, Steel Dynamics’ facility in the Vigo County Industrial Park commenced life as a startup steel processing company, Heartland Steel, with a groundbreaking for the new 800,000 square-foot facility held on June 23, 1998,” Witt said in the letter.

“Not only was Heartland Steel the first major new manufacturing company to come to our community since Sony DADC over a decade prior, but the robust infrastructure and other improvements constructed for Heartland Steel literally helped pave the way for other significant new companies in the [county industrial park] such as Staples Distribution Center, ADVICS, ThyssenKrupp Presta, Casey’s General Stores Distribution Center, Verdeco Recycling and Select Genetics.

“Put another way, but for the presence of this facility, we likely would not have many of the companies that we have today in the [county industrial park],” Witt said.

Steel Dynamics purchased the steel plant from Companhia Sidenrurgica Nacional in 2018 for $400 million.

Witt said since the company’s founding in Fort Wayne in 1993, Steel Dynamics Inc. has grown “to a company of over $9 billion in annual revenue and total employment of nearly 10,000,” Witt said. “At present, the company is in the midst of building a new $1.9 billion electric-arc-furnace flat roll steel mill in Stinton, Texas to serve the southwestern U.S. market, thus demonstrating the company has plenty of geographic options for deployment of its capital,” Witt said.

Steel Dynamics President and CEO Mark Millett was awarded an honorary degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology during the institute’s commencement on May 29 this year.

Witt said that due to “Steel Dynamics’ gravitas, coupled with the proposed new galvanizing and paint lines, the Terre Haute Economic Development Corp. is currently in discussion with additional companies (which) would each achieve a comparative advantage by constructing new facilities in close proximity to Steel Dynamics’ Vigo Count facility,” Witt said.

Witt added that “economic development opportunities of this caliber are very few and far between.”

Witt said the company had considered the expansion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but paused the project in 2020. The company then renewed its effort this spring, he said.

The Vigo County Council is slated to hear the tax abatement request at its Aug. 3 “sunshine meeting” and to vote on a preliminary approval of the tax abatement request at its Aug. 10 meeting. The Council would then vote on a final adoption of a tax abatement in September.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.