Hi all,
I hope this discussion about rail shipment of the DRI pellets comes true. But i strongly suspect that when the full details come out
We will learn this mill,while stated as being built at Wever,IA will actually be built on the Mississippi River. i suspect Wever is simply the closest “town” near the site and that’s why the name is being used.
If you follow the trend of the last decade in new steel mill construction they go up on navigable waterways as that is the cheapest
Transportaion of the heavy, dense commodities consumed by steel mills.
The new Big River steel mill in MO was put up on the Missouri River and has doubled its capacity with a new second mill alongside the first. Some scrap comes in by rail, including railcars to be dismantled but the majority of scrap is barged in.
Yes maybe in the dead of a bad winter with the river frozen over there may be rail movement of material. But the mill could stockpile in anticipation of that event. If most inbound material is via water then when the mill wants rail service good luck finding available cars. Depending on what types of products this mill makes i can see outbound unit trains of finished steel leaving. Such is the case
At an Ohio steel mill I’m aware of that makes oil field fracking pipe.
i am aware of a movement of scrap from a scrap processing facility to Big River steel that costs $35/GT for the combined truck move to the barge and then the barge move over two rivers. While rail is north of $60-$70/GT. Maybe for this new mill a case can be made for a win/win negotiation by rail. We will see.
Oh, and lastly even a modern electric arc steel mill cannot make steel with 100% iron. They need a minimum of 15% scrap input. Otherwise what they make is iron. An electric arc mill can make steel with 100% scrap. Usually the mix is dependent on the finished
Steel specs.
Even the old open hearth furnaces use of mix of iron,scrap,coke,limestone,etc to make steel the old fashion way.
By the way the modern ore cars are so much above and beyond the old ones that we handled back in 1970’s.
Leo Phillipp
On Sep 29, 2026, at 2:45 PM, Bill Jelinek via groups.io <BJelinek808=outlook.com@groups.io> wrote:
Regional railfan and shipping groups say it would be BNSF all the way.
-Bill Jelinek