Tenn. officials say Ohio company has chosen Arkansas for $500 million steel mill

By Associated Press

VAN BUREN — An Ohio-based company has chosen Blytheville, Ark., for a new $500 million steel mill over a site in northwestern Tennessee.

The Union City Daily Messenger reported Thursday that the states were competing for the Warren Fabricating and Machining Corp. plant with tax incentive packages.

Tennessee economic administrator Kingsley Brock told the newspaper that the company notified the state last month that it had picked Blytheville over the Cade's Landing economic development project on the Mississippi River near Tiptonville.

The project includes a steel mill plant, a fabrication shop, a heat treatment facility and a melt shop that would eventually employ up to 1,000 people.

Calls by the Associated Press to the company on Thursday were not immediately returned.

Economic development officials said Tennessee's incentive package, valued at about $219 million, included tax abatement, job tax credits, job training as well as funds for infrastructure. They said the company presented "many equipment and infrastructure needs" to the state.

Brock said local, state and federal officials were involved in the campaign to persuade the company to choose the Cates Landing site.

"We worked this project very hard," he said. "We went to the mat on it because we wanted it very badly for Cates Landing and Lake County."

Chamber of Commerce officials in Blytheville didn't respond to the newspaper's request for an interview about its incentives.

Tennessee's incentive package was believed to be a factor when Toyota in 2007 picked a site in Mississippi over one in Chattanooga for a new assembly plant. Gov. Phil Bredesen said at the time that it might have come down to Mississippi putting "more money on the table than we were willing to do."

According to its Web site, Warren Fabricating and Machining Corp. manufactures large steel fabrications and heavy machining. The main industries it serves are surface mining equipment, steel mills, power generation and large press manufactures.