Nucor plan may grow

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: May 17, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Hundreds of pages deep into a Louisiana air permit application, Nucor Corp. reveals another facet to the multibillion-dollar pig iron manufacturing facility the company may build in St. James Parish.

A third phase, unannounced to the public on Thursday, could add a rolling mill to churn out finished steel products. And in an ironic twist, the company’s permit documents acknowledge that Louisiana’s site beat out a rival location near Mobile, Ala., the same area that won a nearly $4 billion ThyssenKrupp AG steel mill over the St. James site in 2007.

On top of a planned $3.22 billion investment that would produce 6 million tons of pig iron a year by 2012, the iffy third phase could run Nucor’s eventual investment — should it select Louisiana over a foreign location — to $4 billion. A finished steel mill completed last year in Columbus, Miss., and owned by Russian steelmaker Severstal cost nearly $900 million.

“In Phase III, Nucor may ultimately construct a basic oxygen furnace and rolling mill, completing an integrated steel-making operation,” the company writes in its Louisiana permit application. “Phase III will follow should the steel market justify its construction.”

In disclosing its intent to produce pig iron — a feedstock that the potential St. James mill would provide to about seven Nucor steel mini-mills in the Southeast — Nucor talked only about the first two phases that would create 925 direct jobs and nearly 5,000 support jobs in the area, based on a Loren C. Scott & Associates impact study.

The state’s economic development secretary, Stephen Moret, referred to a potential third phase but declined to be more specific about the details of that part of the project. The first phase would be worth $2.1 billion and the second $1.12 billion.

“If we win the first phase, we will have an opportunity to potentially secure two more phases representing hundreds more jobs and billions more in capital investment,” Moret said. “The comprehensive incentive proposal we are finalizing will include a separate incentive package for each of the three phrases.”

A large land parcel is critical to the project, according to Nucor, which considered Norfolk, Va., and Theodore Industrial Park at Mobile, but could find no more than 200 acres in a single parcel at either location. The company also looked at Plaquemines Parish, but found a 400-acre site there too limited.

Maps of the St. James site show Nucor building a pair of Mississippi River docks linked to a railroad spur that would lead from the docks northeastward and intersect with the Canadian National rail line that crosses the 4,061-acre site.

The first and second phases would be built in the center of the site, away from the more residential end of the property along River Road and also away from wetlands north of La. 3125 on the top end of the site. The main entrance gate to the mill would be on La. 3125.

Nucor, or the state on its behalf, would buy three parcels, according to the permit: 2,933 acres owned by Entergy Corp., known as the Wilton site; 174 acres along the Mississippi River owned by the Port of South Louisiana; and 954 acres on the south side of the site owned by the Schexnayder family.

In 2007, Louisiana was prepared to buy a slightly smaller area — about 3,800 acres — for $49 million on behalf of ThyssenKrupp, according to state documents detailing that negotiation.

So far, officials from Nucor Corp., which is based in Charlotte, N.C., aren’t talking publicly about the project beyond a Thursday press release. But its air quality permit application shows a more ambitious construction timetable than is likely possible, a Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality official said Friday.