U. S. Steel’s biggest investment ever is also the largest investment in the history of Arkansas.
Once known as Plum Point before incorporating in 1853, Osceola, Arkansas, has become the plum spot for steel.
The Mississippi River crossroads known for its port, its railroads and its blues serves as one of two county seats (the other being Blytheville) in Mississippi County, where today more steel is produced than in any other county in the United States.
Nobody’s singing the blues in steel territory, even if U. S. Steel-owned Big River Steel (BRS) this year sponsored the 24th Annual Osceola Heritage Music Festival featuring the likes of blues legend R.L. Burnside’s son Duwayne.
U. S. Steel continues to move toward completion of its Big River 2 steel mini mill by the end of this calendar year. It completed a new galvanizing line earlier in 2024. The company in its earnings report this summer said it now expects total capital spend for Big River 2 will be approximately $3.35 billion, part of nearly $4 billion the company is spending in Osceola over a two-year time frame.
The company’s BRS operation also just became the first in the world to receive the ResponsibleSteel certification, a production standard that incorporates environmental, social and governance requirements across 13 principles, which include over 500 criteria for the responsible sourcing and production of steel.
“Our transparency around decarbonization and collaborative approach with our suppliers and community all play a role in what it means to have truly ‘sustainable’ steel products for our customers,” said Dan Brown, senior vice president of Advanced Technology Steelmaking for U. S. Steel and COO of Big River Steel Works.
Nucor-Northeast Arkansas is comprised of Nucor-Yamato Steel, Nucor Steel Arkansas & Nucor Skyline, three divisions of Nucor Corporation. All located in Blytheville, these divisions make NEA one of the top steel-producing regions in the United States.
Nucor-Yamato Steel Company was formed in 1987 as a joint venture between Nucor and Yamato Kogyo with the goal of operating a steel mini-mill to manufacture wide-flange beams in Blytheville, Arkansas. Today, Nucor-Yamato Steel Company has the capacity to produce over 2.5 million tons per year of not only wide-flange beams, but also H-piling, sheet piling, standard I-beams, channels and various other structural shapes.
The company has gone from a Northeast Arkansas cotton field to the largest structural steel mill in the Western Hemisphere, with employment of over 800 men and women. As with all Nucor operations, Nucor-Yamato’s success is tied to the employees’ success. The production bonus system creates an environment where the employees are some of the most talented, creative and well compensated in the industry. Their ability and commitment to continually improve makes Nucor-Yamato Steel Company a world class company and the leader in the structural steel business.
Nucor Steel is a manufacturer of Hot Band, Cold Roll, Galvanized, Galvanneal and Painted Sheet Steel used in a variety of end products, such as automotive, energy, construction, appliance, agriculture equipment and heavy truck and trailers. Operations began in Mississippi County in 1987 and since 2018, Nucor has invested approximately $750 million into its facilities. These investments occurred because of the assets in Mississippi County that support Nucor’s operations: dedicated workforce and industry training at Arkansas Northeastern College; diverse transportation modes via the Mississippi River, BNSF Railroad and interstate system connectivity; reliable and sufficient energy; and its Mid-South location to access a growing customer base.
High Tech, High Talent
In an Arkansas Inc. Podcast interview with Clint O’Neal, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, Dan Brown described the company’s experience in the state beginning with the decision to purchase BRS, an operation that had launched in 2014 on a former soybean field.
“When we started looking at our strategy,” Brown said, “we had some old integrated plants within the U. S. Steel footprint that still make fantastic products for the automotive industry and different types of heavy-grade pipe and tube and different niche markets. But we also wanted to be cost-competitive and also wanted to get into different markets with new technology. We started looking at potentially building a greenfield site/potentially upgrading one of our existing plants. Then, the opportunity with Big River Steel came along. We looked at what was an incredible project … It had become a really, really highly innovative, highly technical plant in Osceola, Arkansas, with just a great, talented, dynamic workforce.”
“We’ll actually be making over 6 million tons per year of steel within this footprint, which, to me, is very incredible.”
— Dan Brown, Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology Steelmaking, U. S. Steel, and COO, Big River Steel Works
Competitive advantages for northeastern Arkansas elucidated by Brown include the Mississippi River for shipping out coil, BNSF as a strong railroad partner and good electricity rates from Entergy Arkansas, which will supply 250 MW of that power from the new 2,100-acre Driver Solar installation nearby.
Moreover, Brown said, “I can’t say anything but great things about what the community has done for Big River Steel, not only Osceola and Mississippi County, but the state of Arkansas.”
Partnerships at Work
Big River 2, known as Project Blueprint, had its own site selection process that saw the company consider more than 40 locations across the South and Mid-South, Brown said, only to arrive at a final destination next door to BRS. Their choice was validated when shovels went into the ground less than six months after U. S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt first spoke about the project with then-Governor Asa Hutchinson. “People worked like crazy with us around the clock to get this done,” Brown said of working through permitting and environmental review. “I would tell you that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else outside of the state of Arkansas. It’s really an incredible story.”
The flat-rolled steel rolling out of Big River goes into such products as car doors and hoods as well as appliances. BRS also makes specialized electrical steel for EVs and hybrids. Soon, Brown said, the facility will be making steel for solar panels, steel roofs and galvanized steel for the construction market.
Other investors in the steel sector in Arkansas include Bekaert (Van Buren), Tate (Pocahontas) and Zekelman Industries, which is pursuing its own $120 million expansion in that other county seat of Blytheville to expand the capabilities and product offerings of its subsidiary Wheatland Tube. Zekelman will partner with Arkansas Northeastern College on a new workforce training initiative involving scholarship funds for at least 10 students a year and internship opportunities for applied science graduates.
“Education and skills training are crucial to developing the next generation of workers,” said COO Tom Muth. “Our goal at Zekelman is to prepare, nurture and inspire students entering the thriving and well-paying steel industry. Our commitment is representative of our partnership with the Blytheville community and ongoing dedication to domestic-only manufacturing.”
Back in Osceola, production after Big River 2 starts up will jump from over 3 million tons a year to over 6 million tons a year, a “very incredible” volume Dan Brown attributes to that dynamic tech/talent combo. Among other resources, the company also is partnering with Arkansas Northeastern College as well as Arkansas State University.
“The amount of tons produced per employee here is a world-class number,” he said, in part because employees are trained to perform two or three different jobs. “People here are paid on high-quality steel that’s produced, taking care of customers through shipments on time/on-time delivery performance,” he told O’Neal. “They’re paid on low delay rates. Keep the production lines running. Keep them running safe and produce a lot of high-quality steel for our customers.” When people do all of that, he said, they “get paid very, very good wages out of this facility.”
As for those people, “When you start building plants out in places like Osceola, Arkansas, you tend to get a lot of employees with very, very good work ethics, people that are very intelligent, people that are very technical, people that have work ethics like no other,” Brown said, noting the region’s farming heritage. “When you find someone that’s either worked on a farm their whole life or gotten up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning on a farm, that’s extremely hard work. When you bring people like that into a facility like this that understands equipment, machinery, technology, and they take even more training classes on how to operate different facilities and production lines, it’s a win-win for everybody.”
