Monumental effort

Mississippi 'minimill' is anything but small

By Richard Cotton

As worn as it may sound, the saying "build it and they will come" is alive and well on a 1,440-acre site a few miles west of Columbus, Miss.

The sprawling $880 million Severcorr LLC minimill steelmaking facility is out of the ground and it is anything but "mini." The huge buildings taking shape dominate the surrounding pastoral landscape.

Founded in 2004, the company aims to supply rolled and sheet steel to the growing automobile manufacturing industry in the Southeast.

"We saw the opportunity to build this new flat-rolled steel mill in the South," said Mike Wagner, Severcorr's chief commercial officer. The endeavor is a partnership of Russian mining and metals company Severstal and the local management team, which is under the leadership of president and CEO John Correnti.

Ancillary steel-centered companies are also coming to Severcorr's megasite. Kenwal Steel Corp. has committed to build a 140,000-sq.-ft. downstream processing and distribution facility adjacent to the Severcorr operation.

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And what an operation it is.

"It's called a minimill because it's an arc furnace-based mill," said Richard Painter, Severcorr's vice president of construction. He added that in a minimill, steel is melted by running huge amounts of electrical current through the steel. Some of the raw material will be recovered scrap steel, though the bulk will be pig iron purchased offshore.

The mill's metal building covers 26 acres.

But, in this case, the building is not really a building. The massive structure - with the roof towering more than 50 ft .above the mill floor - is a façade. Painter said the steel panels enclose the steelmaking operation, which is what the project is really all about.

Painter said the building is merely a covering for what's being built inside.

"Cranes are an integral part of our operation," he added. "We have several large ones, including two 450-ton cranes.

"The size of the building was driven by the crane design and the process procedures. The only reason it resembles a building is that it has a roof and siding. It's not a building, it's a crane runway system."

The building's material is furnished by Ceco Materials, while the actual erection is being performed by Universal Builders of Montgomery, Ala.

CV Engineering of Pittsburgh designed the crane system. The crane runway and associated process equipment platforms, made from 28,000 tons of structural steel, is being erected by Little Rock's Schueck Steel. Severcorr is acting as its own general contractor.

Painter, who said Severcorr is the largest single construction project >> currently underway in Mississippi, said that Aberdeen, Miss.-based Eutaw Construction will have moved 7 million cu. yds. of earth from groundbreaking in October 2005 until completion in late 2007.

He added that earthwork includes "mass excavation, drainage ditches, stormwater retention ponds, scrap handling (area), slag processing (area) and 9 mi. of rail lines."

Painter pointed to the chalk-clay soil as being ideal foundation for the concrete slab construction performed by Associated Brigham Construction; no pilings were needed. The water table is a safe 290 ft. below ground level.

Water is an important component of the steelmaking process. Once it's in full swing, Severccrr will suck up 2.8 million gallons of water daily from two 1,550-ft.-deep wells.

Tennessee Valley Authority is installing power transmission lines to supply 161 kilovolts of power to the site.

"We will use enough power every day to power a city of 50,000 to 60,000 people," Painter said. Severcorr has built its own substation to distribute power in the various voltage ratings it requires for different facets of the mill operation.

Most of the mill floor is 3-ft.-thick monolithically poured concrete. A couple of the runs are 1,800 ft. long. Painter said that the pits where the furnaces will sit are 50 ft.deep.

More than 120,000 cu. yds. of concrete have been poured so far, all mixed at the onsite batching plant erected by concrete supplier MMC Materials Inc. MMC area manager Rocky McBride said the plant has a production capacity of 220 cu. yds. an hour but a realistic rate on the Severcorr project is about 170 yds. per hour, eight to 10 hours a day, five days a week.

McCrary West Construction Co. of Columbus, Miss., is pumping the concrete.

"We have poured as much as 4,300 yds. in 14 hours," McBride said. The majority of concrete has been a fairly standard 4,000-lb. mix, though some 3,000-lb. batches have been poured for electrical equipment applications.

McBride had no firm estimate of how much concrete will eventually be poured at Severcorr, but he said the final amount could be more than 200,000 cu. yds. if the current scope of work is expanded.

Ordinarily, MMC runs eight to 10 trucks at the site, though the firm has put as many as 16 trucks in service on busy days. McBride likened the undertaking to the Nissan plant construction in Canton, Miss., where MMC supplied a comparable volume of concrete in a joint venture with Jackson Ready Mix.

"The biggest problem we've had has been adjusting our operation to meet the demand," McBride added. He credited good communication between Painter, Severcorr construction manager Clint Carver, the various subcontractors and MMC as being key to keeping the project running smoothly.

Painter said he's thankful for a number of factors during the course of the Severcorr undertaking. Unusually dry weather during the past few months is near the top of the list; the stable quality of the site's ground itself is also up there.

Throughout the summer, Painter said the construction force numbered about 780. That number will swell to as many as 2,000 at the peak of work in coming months. Eventually, more than 450 full-time employees will operate the facility.

Severcorr will be in full production by the third quarter of 2007.