New York (Platts)--27Jan2011/611 pm EST/2311 GMT
US mini-mill steelmaker Nucor has received the final permits for its massive 2.5 million st/year ironmaking facility in Louisiana and "construction will begin immediately," chairman and CEO Dan DiMicco said in an earnings call Thursday with analysts. DiMicco said start-up is scheduled for mid-2013, and the directly reduced iron (DRI) from the plant will allow the now largely scrap-based producer to increase its raw material self-sufficiency. In October, Nucor entered into an onshore natural gas working interest drilling program, with what it described as one of North America's largest suppliers, for the supply of natural gas to the $750 million DRI plant to be built in St James Parish, Louisiana. The iron ore pellets for the plant would come from three or four sources and the price of the ore "will be on the open market," John Frias, Nucor's CFO, said last fall. The new Louisiana plant will have planned capacity of 2.5 million mt/year which, combined with its DRI operations in Trinidad, will move Nucor to obtaining two-thirds of its raw materials goal in using scrap substitutes, the company has said. Earlier Thursday, Nucor reported an $11.4 million loss for Q4 2010. --Joe Innace, joseph_innace@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Steel Markets Daily. See more information at http://bit.ly/SteelMarketsDaily