Alabama will be home for new steel mill
German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp said it will build a plant to make carbon and stainless steel about 45 miles upriver from Mobile, Ala., rather than along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, another site it was considering.
The company will spend $3.7 billion to build a mill capable of making 4.1 million metric tons of carbon steel end products. It is a substantial increase in capacity for ThyssenKrupp, which made 14 million tons of crude steel last year.
The new facility is expected to substantially increase traffic in the Port of Mobile, as it will use slabs of steel imported from Brazil as feedstock for the mill.
The Alabama site is located at a riverfront location accessible by barges, but not deep draft ships. Louisiana had hoped the ability to move large ships up the river would help convince ThyssenKrupp to locate it there.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said “a project this size, with this amount of economic impact, comes along perhaps once in a generation. It is transformational.”
ThyssenKrupp said the Alabama site was chosen for logistical reasons, including “considerations of the company’s supply chain from Brazil to our projected customers; operating costs such as electricity and labor; and site specific capital expenditures.”
The company was attracted to the region by the large number of current or projected automobile assembly plants. It will also make products for construction, electrical and utility industries and makers of appliances, precision machinery and engineered products.
