Essar Steel Holdings, a subsidiary of India's Essar Group, has lined up investments of more than US$4 billion for North America over the next five years, including $1.6 billion to launch North America's first mine-based steel plant in Minnesota's Iron Range.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Iron Range mill was held Monday.
Essar Group chairman Shashi Ruia told the crowd at the ceremony, "We are excited about starting this project. Today's groundbreaking is another step towards our goal of building a large presence in the steel sector in the Americas."
In 2007, Essar Steel acquired Minnesota Steel, which has more than 1.4 billion metric tons of iron ore resources. The expansion will include a concentration plant, a direct-reduced iron (DRI) plant and steelmaking facilities. Annual production output is expected at 2.5 million metric tons.
The new Essar Minnesota Steel is expected to support the Essar Steel Algoma plant in Ontario, Canada. Essar has committed to a $500 million capital expansion in Algoma over five years. Since the acquisition of Essar Steel Algoma, the plant has risen in capacity from 2.4 million metric tons to 4 million metric tons.