US based Nucor Corporation announced on August 13 that it will invest $59 million to expand its Vulcraft Indiana manufacturing facility in St. Joe, Indiana, adding the capability to produce steel grating products. The investment is expected to create 20 new full-time jobs at the site, which currently employs more than 300 people.
According to the office of Indiana Governor Mike Braun, which announced the project the same day, Vulcraft will construct and equip a new 127,000-square-foot facility on its 250-acre site in St. Joe, with groundbreaking planned for the fourth quarter of this year and the new positions to be filled by the end of 2027 at average wages more than 150 percent of the DeKalb County average.The added space will make Vulcraft Indiana one of four Vulcraft locations producing steel grating, alongside two plants in Canada and one other in the US, with the product used for industrial flooring and stair treads.
The site already produces steel joists, joist girders and steel decking.
John Hollatz, executive vice president of fabricated construction products, said the investment will allow the company to “better serve customers and strengthen its downstream production capabilities,” advancing a corporate strategy Nucor describes as "Grow the Core and Expand Beyond." Nucor acquired Vulcraft in 1962, marking its entry into the steel industry, and Vulcraft Indiana opened in 1972 as the company's fifth Vulcraft plant. It is now one of nine Vulcraft facilities in North America.
Vulcraft is the largest US producer of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, products used mainly in nonresidential construction including warehouses, data centers, manufacturing plants, retail space, schools and hospitals, and it has annual joist and deck production capacity of approximately 1.2 million tons. The announcement is Nucor's fourth major investment in Indiana in recent years, following a $290 million sheet mill modernization at Crawfordsville announced in 2022, a $115 million utility infrastructure production facility announced the following year, and a $28.5 million insulated metal panel plant in Waterloo that began operations in 2021. Together these projects account for roughly 300 new jobs, and Nucor now employs more than 2,600 people at more than a dozen locations in the state.
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