Nucor Leaders Drop Northwest Rebar Mill Plan
Executives of steel maker Nucor Corp. have dropped their plan to build a rebar micro mill in the Pacific Northwest because they think some of the company’s other recent investments have given them enough capacity to supply clients in the Western United States.
The directors of Charlotte-based Nucor approved $860 million for the micro mill plan in February of last year. The project would have been built to produce 650,000 tons per year and been Nucor’s largest facility of its type. Chairman, President and CEO Leon Topalian had since then not identified a site for the project and Topalian said Oct. 28 that the plan has now been shelved.
“With the investment of the melt shop in Kingman, Arizona, our Utah facility and the breadth and exposure of our Seattle mill, we are adequately covered for the Western side of the United States as well as Western Canada,” Topalian told analysts and investors on a conference call. “We’re going to use those dollars elsewhere to think about growth. And again: How do we not just meet our cost of capital but double our cost of capital.”
The Nucor team spent nearly $3.2 billion on capital projects last year—which was some 50% more than in 2023—and is on pace to slightly top that figure this year. The Utah melt shop Topalian referred to while addressing the changed Pacific Northwest plan is one of the results of that investment push. Another is a rebar micro mill in Lexington, North Carolina, that was commissioned last quarter.
In the three months that ended Sept. 30, Nucor produced a net profit of $683 million, more than double the amount from the same period of 2024, on revenues of more than $8.5 billion. The company’s steel mills grew their operating income to $793 million from $309 million while operating profits at its steel products division ticked up to $319 million. External shipments totaled about 6.8 million tons and Nucor’s mill backlogs rose 30% from a year earlier to about 3.5 million tons.
Shares of Nucor (Ticker: NUE) rose more than 5% to about $152 on the heels of executives’ Q3 report and conference call. They have climbed 25% over the past six months and the company’s market capitalization now tops $34 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has been in business journalism since the mid-1990s and writes about public companies, markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications, focusing on IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal, T&D World and Healthcare Innovation. He also curates the twice-monthly Market Moves Strategy newsletter that showcases Endeavor stories on strategy, leadership and investment and contributes to other Market Moves newsletters.
With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati in 1997, initially covering retail and the courts before shifting to banking, insurance and investing. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal before being named editor of the Nashville Post in early 2008. He led a team that helped grow the Post's online traffic more than fivefold before joining Endeavor in September 2021.