Nucor Steel Tuscaloosa
Nucor Steel Tuscaloosa is a manufacturing plant for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based Nucor Corporation. The plant produces coiled steel plate for automotive, industrial and military manufacturers, and for construction and civil engineering. An electric arc furnace is used on site to recycle scrap steel into finished products. Brian Phillippi is vice president and general manager of the plant.
The plant is located at 1700 Holt Road Northeast on the banks of the Black Warrior River in unincorporated Tuscaloosa County, northeast of Tuscaloosa and northwest of Holt. It was originally constructed in 1985 for the Tuscaloosa Steel Corporation and was the first plant in the United States to employ Steckel-type reversible coil milling.
The plant was acquired by the newly-privatized British Steel Corporation of Scunthorpe, England in 1991. In 1996 under their ownership, the plant was modernized and expanded at a cost of $192 million, increasing its production capacity to 700,000 tons per year.
British Steel merged with Koninklijke Hoogovens of IJmuiden, Netherlands in 1999 to form the Corus Group, which operated the mill as Corus Tuscaloosa. In 2004 Nucor acquired the facility, which then employed about 325 workers, for $90 million. The company upgraded the coil mill to process heavier plates in 2020.
In 2023 Nucor announced that it would invest another $280 million to expand its products lines by 2027. The Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority approved up to $16.8 million in tax abatement incentives to offset the company's investment, based on the retention of more than 400 jobs.
References
- "Nucor clears hurdle in Corus acquisition." (July 13, 2004) The Tuscaloosa News
- Rebman, Stephanie (November 16, 2023) "Steel plant investing $280M in massive Alabama project." Birmingham Business Journal