òòò½ÊÓƵ

About 1,800 people work on the site, often crisscrossing each other in trucks, earthmoving equipment or other vehicles. Cranes taller than most Marshall buildings lift structural steel into place on huge skeletons that will soon be covered. Production equipment from North America and Europe is being brought to the site. CSX is building a rail spur, and construction has begun on what will be one of the largest barge docks along several hundred miles of Ohio River, if not the largest, to deliver raw materials and to transport coils of sheet steel to processing centers or to customers.

Johnny Jacobs, general manager of Nucor Steel West Virginia, said in a recent interview with HD Media that the buildings on the site should be finished before the end of this year. Then comes the next phase òòò½ÊÓƵ” installing production equipment in them. Scrap steel will be melted and mixed with other materials to produce steel to customersòòò½ÊÓƵ™ specifications. Then it will be rolled, coated, coiled and stored before being shipped. Production workers are already being hired and trained so they will be ready to make steel when construction is finished late next year.

Opportunities like Nucor Steel West Virginia are rare, but they do happen. The most recent example would be Toyota West Virginia in Putnam County, where 2,000 people assemble engines and other drivetrain components for Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Toyota prides itself on being environmentally conscious, as evidenced by its solar power array. Nucor likewise will be a leader in using clean energy òòò½ÊÓƵ” in establishing its advantages and its disadvantages here in the Ohio Valley.

There are differences between Toyota and Nucor, of course, other than one being a Japanese-based company and the other headquartered in North Carolina. The Toyota plant in West Virginia has one customer òòò½ÊÓƵ” Toyota òòò½ÊÓƵ” while Nucor Steel West Virginia will sell to customers on a broader market. And Nucor Steel West Virginia will have only 800 workers on site when the mill goes into production.

One possible benefit of Nucor is that other companies that use sheet steel or process it could locate near the West Virginia mill. Or perhaps established companies could buy from Nucor and increase their own business and employment levels as a result. All those vehicles on W.Va. 2 could be a magnet for retail businesses.

Nucor Steel West Virginia is what $4 billion looks like, and itòòò½ÊÓƵ™s a tremendous opportunity for people in three states òòò½ÊÓƵ” if they, their governments and their institutions are ready to take advantage.