A company that produces flat-rolled steel products has ceased operations in Columbus, but unlike a larger local company in the same business, the effects on the community aren’t significant.
Metals USA closed its facility on The Island near the Lowndes County Port in December, according to information provided by the Golden Triangle Development LINK, which monitors business and industry in the area.
Repeated efforts to contact Metals USA officials, headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were unsuccessful, but a local source familiar with the company said the company’s Columbus employees were offered an opportunity to relocate to the other facilities owned by the company in Georgia and Alabama.
Last week, the company began removing equipment and material from the local site.
“It wasn’t a really big operation,” LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins said. “They produced rolled steel, like Steel Dynamics (at the industrial park on Highway 82), but on a much smaller scale. Their market was more for individuals or small companies, kind of a special-order situation.”
Lowndes County Tax Assessor said the company paid $23,319 in taxes last year, which was divided almost equally between the city of Columbus, Lowndes County and the Lowndes County School District.
According to information in the LINK database, a business called Jeffrey Steel opened at the 5-acre site in 1968. Metals USA, which operates nine flat-rolled steel facilities and 10 plate steel facilities in the United States, purchased the spot in 2003.
At the time of its closing, the business had approximately 20 employees, according to LINK records.
Although located on the Island, the Metals USA site is not part of the almost 100-acre site the LINK is currently marketing after the closure of the KiOR plant.
“That site is still owned by the company,” Higgins said. “I’m not sure what they plan to do with it. It’s a nice little facility, but it doesn’t have rail access, so I’m not sure what the prospects are for it.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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