SAN PATRICIO, Texas — The $1.9 billion steel plant in Sinton is still under construction. It sits on a huge 2,600 acre site.
"It’s an amazing piece of engineering, so, there’s equipment coming from all over the world; in some of the cases -- that equipment had lead times of 18 months to get certain parts of the plant manufactured," Barry Schneider, Sr. Vice President of Flat Roll Steel Group for Steel Dynamics said.
So exactly what will the steel plant produce?
"Our premise of making steel is to use scrap steel, so we start with scrap steel, we use electricity to melt that down and turn it into liquid steel and then we make it into a new product," Schneider said.
Steel Dynamics was founded 25 years ago and is now a Fortune 500 company. It’s self-financing the Sinton plant. The company's growth has pushed them into the top five of steel companies in the U.S. The Sinton plant may help them climb closer to number one.
Right now, there are about 2,000 people working to put the plant together. Eventually, it will employ around 600 workers who will produce three million tons of steel each year.
"Our team is hoping that this summer we are actually able to start parts of that facility; hopefully, opening by the end of the summer," Schneider said.
The company also has a number of smaller customers opening up their own businesses here on the site. Those and other companies will turn the steel produced here into kitchen appliances, automobiles and even steel roofing and siding for homes and businesses.
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