LITTLE ROCK — Details of a “superproject” to be built in Arkansas that will require more than $1 billion in public and private investment are expected to be released this morning.
Gov. Mike Beebe, who in his State of the State address earlier this month described it as “one of the biggest projects this state has ever seen,” will announce the specifics at 11 a.m. today at the state Capitol.
The company bringing the superproject to the state has not been identified.But speculation among state legislators has been that the project will be either unidentified projects in southwest Arkansas involving a Chinese company or a steel mill in northeast Arkansas.
The state defines a superproject as having at least 500 jobs and at least $500 million in investments.
Grant Tennille, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, declined to identify the corporation.
The project will use advanced manufacturing and have “a large number of high paying jobs,” Tennille said.
The jobs will pay well in excess of the state’s average income of $38,000 a year, Tennille said.
The superproject will attract vendors to supply materials to the plant and customers to buy the finished project, Tennille said.
The investment of more than $1 billion will make the project the largest single investment in Arkansas’ history, said Joe Holmes, a spokesman for the commission.
There is speculation that John Correnti, a former Nucor plant manager in Blytheville and later chief executive officer of Nucor, plans to build a steel mill in Mississippi County.
Correnti wanted to build a steel mill in Arkansas in 2005 but the Steel-Corr plant was eventually built in Columbus, Miss. That mill would have employed 450 workers earning annual salary and bonuses of $70,000.
Attempts to reach Correnti for comments were unsuccessful.
There already are two major steel mills owned by Nucor Corp., both in Mississippi County. Nucor recently announced that it plans to build a $750 million plant in Louisiana. It also may announce a second plant this year, Bloomberg News reported this month. The two plants, known as direct-reduced iron plants, will take advantage of cheap natural gas instead of coal to purify iron ore, the main ingredient in steel.
Last year, Beebe traveled to China and said after the visit that it had produced two business prospects. But both of those prospects seem to be smaller than the one to be announced today.
In April, after the China trip, Beebe said one of the companies was “more in line” with timber interests in south Arkansas and the other was aligned with retail interests in western Arkansas.
Landing the superproject is contingent on the state legislature’s approval of funds for the project, Tennille said. Under Amendment 82, the legislature can approve up to 5 percent of the state’s general revenue; 5 percent of last year’s state revenue would be $235 million.
The legislature will not be asked to approve that much money, Tennille said.
The rest of the billion-plus dollars would be invested by the company.
“This is the first time that we will be asking the legislature to enact Amendment 82 and approve a deal,” Tennille said. “It is a process that we’re all sort of feeling our way through as we go.”
If the legislature does not approve the funding, “the project will go to another state and I predict will be announced very quickly in another state,” Tennille said.
Tennille said he has no reason to believe the legislature will reject the funding.
“I know for a fact that at least one other state has not given up, and they are still after it,” Tennille said.
He wouldn’t identify the other state, but he said it is a neighboring state to Arkansas.
Arkansas and several other states were first approached about the project about a year ago, Tennille said.
“For the last few months, it has been down to us and one other state,” Tennille said. “We have managed to answer all their questions and, more than anything, find the right site.”
For this project, logistics played a major role in where the company would locate, Tennille said. That includes the ease of getting inbound materials to the site and product shipped from the site, Tennille said.
“Arkansas made the original list because of our location in the country and our transportation assets, which include both north-south and east-west rail, north-south and east-west interstate highways and five navigable waterways, including the Mississippi River,” Tennille said.
If everything goes according to plans, the plant should be operating within two years, Tennille said.
Business, Pages 21 on 01/29/2013