Steel Dynamics Incorporated intends to purchase 90 acres on the southern region of the Lowndes County Port Authority’s East Bank.
Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins told The Dispatch the company has been working with LCPA on a land purchase agreement to potentially benefit its on-loading and off-loading operations at the port.
SDI has been a customer of the East Bank, trucking and railing scrap metal, pig iron and other materials to SDI’s steel mill near the Golden Triangle Regional Airport. It then ships metal coils to customers via rail, barges and trucks.
If the land purchase goes through, Higgins said SDI could essentially set up its own port operations with its own vendors.
“As SDI grows, they are going to undoubtedly have the need to bring in and ship out more products via the waterway,” Higgins said.
“We’ve got a design of additional rail spurs that could serve the property that could allow them to load from barge to train and train to barge there.
We’ve got conceptual layouts and cost estimates and how we would do it there.”
Lowndes County Tax Clerk Pat Adair estimated the land value at $1.6 million for tax purposes, though a sales price for the transaction has not been disclosed.
That section of the East Bank once housed KiOR, a bio-organic fuels plant that opened in 2012. KiOR stopped operating a year later and its improvements have since been demolished.
LCPA Board Attorney John Crowell told The Dispatch the contract between SDI and the port has yet to be finalized, but the parties are ironing out a few last-minute details.
“I think we’re real close to getting it tied down,” Crowell said. “But we don’t have a final document to execute at this point. I hope to in the near future.”
The port brings in about 1.5 million tons of cargo annually, with SDI being its largest customer. Crowell added the agreement to sell 90 acres to SDI would benefit the port, which would continue to do business with SDI.
“We expect (business) to continue at some level under different circumstances,” he said. “We hope there will be a continuing relationship and believe there will be.”
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston said any deal between SDI and LCPA board, which will vote on the proposal, will need final approval from the supervisors. In January, supervisors approved a resolution requiring the port get their approval on contract options longer than six months or deals involving more than $25,000.
Port Director Will Sanders declined to comment to The Dispatch since the contract is pending.
David A. Lipschitz, investor relations director at SDI, did not respond by press time to calls or emails seeking comment.
Benefits to ADI
Higgins said the deal would also benefit Aluminum Dynamics, which is a $2 billion project to build a flat-rolled aluminum mill on 2,100 acres on Charleigh D. Ford Jr. Drive. Construction for that project is expected to begin this summer and be complete in 2025.
In November, The Mississippi Legislature passed a $243 million incentive package to assist the mill’s buildout and for a biocarbon manufacturing plant on Artesia Road, near the International Paper pulp mill. ADI also wanted to build two other sites, Higgins said, including a production facility on 200 acres owned by the Lowndes County Development Authority just north of the company’s aluminum mill and a “future” project that has been unidentified.
“Some folks speculate that this might be related to the future project that they could choose to build or could not choose to build,” Higgins said.
Hairston said SDI had an option to buy those 90 acres in 2022 when the company considered locating the biocarbon facility there before deciding to instead build it on Artesia Road.
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