APPLE GROVE, W.Va. — A year after ground was broken in the middle of a cornfield between Route 2 and the Ohio River in Mason County a massive industrial complex is taking shape.
Nucor Steel officials welcomed U.S. Senator Joe Manchin to the bustling construction site of their new mill Friday. Across the site, which rivals the size of some small towns in West Virginia, massive steel skeletons are rising from the flat river bottom skyward. When complete, the facility will house one of the world’s most state of the art and clean operating steel mills in the world.
“We’re probably two years away from start up, so we’re probably a third of the way through the construction process. Some of the first pieces of equipment have been set in the last couple of weeks and that will ramp up as we move forward,” said Nucor Steel CEO Leon Topalian.
Just under 250 Nucor employees are on site along with close to 1,000 contractors and construction workers moving the project along.
Manchin helped shepherd the process of getting Nucor to consider West Virginia as a new location,. Friday, he was on hand to see the progress. He suggested the plant is not only critical for jobs in West Virginia, but is also critical for U.S. National Security.
“When Putin declared war on Ukraine and used energy as a weapon, you have to have the building blocks of America made in America,” said the Senator.
Manchin said parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which he helped to create, actively led to the creation of the investment by Nucor.
“Sometimes politics are so divisive anymore they make you pick a side, but if you start picking sides, you ain’t going to have this. You can have differences and disagreements, but when it comes time to do something, you better come together because if they find resistance that we’re not working together, they’re not coming,” he added.
Topalian said the outlook is for steel products to start rolling off the line at the facility in 2027.
“Producing some of the most state of the art products for our end use customers from automotive to construction to data centers and all industrial applications. We couldn’t be more thrilled about this plant and what it’s going to mean for the future,” Topalian added.