Big River Steel

Big River Steel held the grand opening of its $1.3 billion scrap recycling and steel production plant on March 1, 2017, and just a bit more than a year later — in June 2018 — it announced a $1.2 billion expansion to double its capacity. The company, sited on what was once a 1,300-acre soybean field, is living up to its reputation as “the gift that keeps on giving,” as one local official termed it.

Big River Steel produced 1.6 million tons of flat-rolled steel products in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2018; its current expansion will double that. Its customers include major automakers and some of the biggest companies in the world: Mercedes, BMW, Ford Motor, Toyota, Walmart and Exxon Mobil.

Big River, which employs 600 and which was the largest economic development project in Arkansas history, calls itself a technology company that just happens to make steel. To that end, it has melded the two main types of steel production facilities: integrated steel producers, which use basic oxygen furnaces and primarily consume iron ore and coal, and minimills, which use electric arc furnaces and primarily consume scrap metal.

This makes Big River Steel a “flex mill,” which allows it to focus on “optimizing our product mix to maximize profitability in response to changing market demands rather than focusing on production volume,” the company says.

And because it consumes scrap metal, it’s a recycler, a quality appreciated by automakers, among others, who seek to source their products sustainably. “Our focus on sustainability is demonstrated by the fact that we are the only steel producer in the world that is LEED-certified,” Big River notes.

Big River emphasizes the training and teamwork of its employees, most of whom have no previous steelmaking experience. The company pays weekly production bonuses based on the quality of steel produced and on a team’s performance compared with benchmarks. “For the year ended 2018, Big River Steel’s employees averaged $132,000 in take-home pay plus benefits,” the company says.

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