Steelcorr Developer Expects State To Sign Deal

The developer of a steel mill in Lowndes County, Mississippi, expects Mississippi government officials to sign off on the financial agreement this week.

The signing would mean construction could begin next month, said SteelCorr president John Correnti.

"I signed the MOU (memorandum of understanding) ... and sent it back to Jackson," Correnti said. "We're getting damn close now, damn close. Before, it was the problem of the month, then the problem of the week, then the problem of the day. We're about to get all the problems out of the way."

Correnti said the closing is scheduled for July 25-26 in New York and construction would begin shortly thereafter, Correnti said.

Correnti was president of Nucor, the nation's largest steelmaker, before being fired in December 1999.

Gov. Haley Barbour, Attorney General Jim Hood and Leland Speed, head of the Mississippi Development Authority, must sign the MOU. MDA is handling the state's $110 million in incentives for the project.

The deal allows Lowndes County to close its loan with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for $12 million to buy the 1,550-acre megasite where SteelCorr plans to build and fund site and infrastructure improvements.

Correnti and other former Nucor executives started SteelCorr in late 2003 and started looking at Lowndes County for its first plant and headquarters last October.

State officials, SteelCorr executives, including Correnti, and the start-up company’s financiers reached a final agreement Friday.

"Things were never off track, we just weren’t moving down the track as fast as all of us might have liked. A lot of people had an equity interest in this," Correnti said, referring to GE Capital, KfW, the German financial institution that also is part of the $725 million deal, and Severstal, the Russian steel-making giant that is providing $200 million.

The plant, planned for just east of the Golden Triangle Regional Airport, will employ 450 people turning scrap iron into as much as 1.5 million tons of high-grade steel a year, primarily for the automotive industry. The plant will take about 20 months to build.