Good news on the Iron Range: $2 billion Mesabi Metallics is finally happening, for real this time.

The concentrator is one of the most complicated parts of a modern iron mine. Here, workers rush to frame in the giant facility before snow falls so the plant can be completed over winter. Photo by Aaron Brown/Minnesota Reformer.

The following words might cause fellow Iron Rangers to click social media “laughy faces,” utter curses or perhaps even throw empty beer cans in my driveway, but they are true. I have been to the Mesabi Metallics construction site near Nashwauk. Those crazy sons-of-guns are building a mine.

When I was there on Oct. 1, about 265 construction workers were on the job. The company now employs 42 full time people, mostly mining technicians and engineers crammed into a fleet of office trailers. Soon, they’ll move into an office complex that already features carpet, paint, cubicles and drop ceilings. Once the concentrator plant is sealed up this fall, workers will spend the winter installing the complex equipment that turns low grade iron ore into material used to make high grade iron pellets.

Normally, news of a new mine is welcome on the Iron Range. But years of delays on this project caused rampant frustration. Today, Mesabi Metallics claims to be on track to ship iron ore in 2026. That figure seems optimistic, but such a feat now appears possible.

For me, the persuasive detail was $113 million in new spending since May 2023, added to what the company describes as more than $2 billion expended since the project’s groundbreaking in 2007. I live nearby. Trucks regularly haul new equipment onto a construction site that appears better organized than the one I saw in 2015.

Mining company claims always deserve healthy skepticism — this company in particular — but they’d never spend that much money unless they expect to operate a mine.

For almost 20 years, the value-added iron ore project slated for the old Butler Taconite location confounded Iron Range communities, Minnesota politicians, and even the project’s owners. The idea for a sophisticated new mine combined with a value-added direct-reduced-iron plant, or even a steel mill, began to germinate in the early 2000s. Project backers searched for investment while promising thousands of jobs. In 2008, Indian steel giant Essar broke ground for the facility at the same site where a mine closure in 1985 devastated the region.

The state of Minnesota, through Itasca County, helped Essar build rail lines, roads and electrical infrastructure. Hope abounded. Results thoroughly disappointed.

Essar Steel Minnesota declared bankruptcy in 2017, shortly before Essar Steel itself declared bankruptcy overseas. After that, the project passed through the hands of another failed company owned by Tom Clarke, a nursing home magnate from the state of Virginia. In 2018, ERP Iron Ore went belly up. They made no meaningful progress other than changing the project name to Mesabi Metallics. In an Oct. 9 Minnesota Star Tribune story, Mike Hughlett reported that a Minneapolis law firm is suing Clark for more than $292,000 in unpaid legal fees

Back in India, Essar Steel’s steelmaking operations were acquired by ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel in 2022.

However, Sashi and Ravi Ruia — the brothers who founded the company, along with several other family members — reorganized as the Essar Group. This version of Essar regained control of the Minnesota project with renewed intent to finish what it started.

Along the way, Iron Range contractors drowned in unpaid invoices while local residents watched petals flutter off the faded blooms of their small towns. The project’s ongoing fight with Cleveland-Cliffs over state mining leases added fears that these failures might block a new source of iron ore for Hibbing Taconite, which is nearing the end of its current mine plan. More than 700 employees at Hibtac numbered among the project’s biggest critics.

Much has changed.

Earlier this year, Cliffs applied for permits to work a thin, deep band of ore stretching from outside Nashwauk to Calumet. This mining could begin as early as 2027, providing ore for Hibtac.

Larry Sutherland, chief operating officer, said Mesabi Metallics is no longer contesting the state leases they lost to Cliffs in 2023. He said the company controls 50 years of ore within adjacent land. They’re currently working with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to amend their mining permits to reflect this change.

In addition, the global steel industry continues its rapid transition to electric arc furnaces and technology referred to as “green steel,” a movement to increase energy efficiency in steelmaking. Steel production currently accounts for almost 10% of global carbon emissions, mostly because of energy-intensive blast furnaces now falling out of favor. This new kind of steelmaking requires the kind of direct-reduced grade iron pellets that Mesabi Metallics plans to make. Currently, only two of the six taconite plants on the Iron Range are capable of making DR pellets, both of which feed DRI plants in other states.

Joe Broking, CEO of Mesabi Metallics, said the company will first sell DR-grade pellets on the open market, which could include North American and seaborne customers as far away as Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. But their long term goal remains the construction of as many as two DRI plants, and eventually a steel mill.

“We hope to clean up the steel industry — either moving away from blast furnaces or giving them time to adjust,” said Broking.

The Iron Range has every right to be mad about the broken promises and missed deadlines that plagued Essar and Mesabi Metallics these last 16 years. I sure am. I’m tired of companies that promise the moon and deliver nothing. And, for that matter, a political system that runs on obedience to a single industry.

But you can’t argue with a mine blast. Mesabi Metallics says it will start drilling, blasting and stripping ore as early as next April and completing plant construction later in 2025.

Mesabi Metallics spent $2.5 billion dollars to build a plant that we can see with our own eyes. It charts a path toward cleaner direct-reduced-iron and steel here on the Mesabi. No, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But the region needs to add value to its iron industry more than yet another long term resentment.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE