Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

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Proto48Patrick
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Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Proto48Patrick »

Just heard that there may be an extensive steel mill going up near Durand. Looking to acquire 4 square miles of land.

Has anyone heard of this?


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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by atrainguy60 »

Proto48Patrick wrote:Just heard that there may be an extensive steel mill going up near Durand. Looking to acquire 4 square miles of land.

Has anyone heard of this?


Patrick
I can't speak for the steel mill itself. As for the size, I just outlined the town of Durand on Google Maps, and it came up as 2.01 square miles. I find a steel mill about twice the size of the town rather over the top.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by atrainguy60 »

Just found this article referring to what Proto48Patrick is talking about. It mentions the rumors of the steel mill:

http://www.abc12.com/content/news/Homeo ... 35683.html

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Proto48Patrick »

Yes, obviously not IN downtown Durand. Plenty of land in every direction along the railroads tho.This is not information I take lightly or share lightly and the source is above my pay grade and very reliable. Same source I used when the Grayling Auroco board plant was proposed, along with a proposed Ikea Manufacturing plant nearby.

Time will tell.
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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by atrainguy60 »

Proto48Patrick wrote:Yes, obviously not IN downtown Durand. Plenty of land in every direction along the railroads tho.This is not information I take lightly or share lightly and the source is above my pay grade and very reliable. Same source I used when the Grayling Auroco board plant was proposed, along with a proposed Ikea Manufacturing plant nearby.

Time will tell.
I know you didn't mean in Durand, I figured whatever would be built would be in the farmland outside of town. 4 square miles just seems over-the-top large for anything. But I could very well be wrong...

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Proto48Patrick »

if you're gonna build a modern steel mill, might as well do it right. Will be great to watch and be a part of on my end. Should get all sorts of people talking :wink:
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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by atrainguy60 »

Yep, and it should be great for the economy in the local area if it adds 800 jobs as mentioned in the article. I do feel bad for those who would be forced to move from their home, but I suppose their being compensated, hopefully generously. From the railfan perspective, this may be great news for Durand. May mean plenty coke trains in and out, and lots of steel cars going out. Especially since their is no water connection like with many other steel mills in Pennsylvania or Detroit or NW Indiana. I would think they would have to turn to rail for a majority of the transportation.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Steve B »

This has everything Proto48Patrick said plus a lot more. The Vernon Twp. supervisor says that 2.5 square miles is a closer estimate.

http://www.durandnow.com/project-tim.html

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by MiddleMI »

Sounds like a game-changer as far as employment is concerned for Durand and Shiawassee County as a whole, which has been struggling economically for some time, now. Durands rail connections are paying off to land something like this, as is the connection to I-69.

BTW, that link speaks of 800 acres, which is 1.25 square miles, which sounds far more likely than the other figures given. Still a huge industrial development either way. Durand proper, itself, is only 2.1 square miles in area.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by chapmaja »

I'm not trying to be the downer here, but what is the benefit of building in Durand? Yes, it has the rail connections and the nearby highway connection, but is it near the source of the raw materials? No. Is it near the customer? Not unless something else big is happening we haven't heard about.

If it is in fact a steel mill, how would iron ore arrive? Ship from the Lake Superior ports to Toledo then up. Ship to Gary, Indiana then up CN. Rail all the way around? Ship to Saginaw then down the HESR (I like this idea).

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by GTW6401 »

There is already plans in the works to build a new Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. iron ore processing plant at the Port of Toledo.

Toledo has the existing railroad and docks to make the project work.

http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2017/0 ... oledo.html

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by jggilmore7 »

chapmaja wrote:I'm not trying to be the downer here, but what is the benefit of building in Durand? Yes, it has the rail connections and the nearby highway connection, but is it near the source of the raw materials? No. Is it near the customer? Not unless something else big is happening we haven't heard about.

If it is in fact a steel mill, how would iron ore arrive? Ship from the Lake Superior ports to Toledo then up. Ship to Gary, Indiana then up CN. Rail all the way around? Ship to Saginaw then down the HESR (I like this idea).
All good points. I guarantee that if it's really a steel mill, it'll be an electric-furnace "minimill" and not a big integrated mill with blast furnaces. For several good reasons. First, no municipality the size of Durand or bigger would ever allow the permits for the kind of air pollution that an integrated plant would produce. Second, brand new BF's have not been built in this country since the '60s because the cost is too high, and if they wanted to build an integrated plant they would ONLY build it right on the lakes somewhere, not inland. There's a reason all the inland integrated plants in this country have died out, except 2 (2 others sit idled but can be restarted). Raw materials transportation is a huge cost factor for integrated mills, and rail transportation is clearly inferior to lake boats. Third, the amount of workers mentioned in the article was 800, not nearly enough to run a fully integrated mill with BF's, oxygen furnaces, continuous casters, reheat furnaces and multiple rolling mills, etc. However, 800 sounds about right for a minimill, which would still be great, but it's only scrap gondolas in and some (not all) finished or semi-finished products out by rail. Steel is rebounding a bit in this country, but not favorable enough for a greenfield integrated plant and certainly not one in Durand. JG

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by GreatLakesRailfan »

I take it this would be similar in concept to the mill between Butler and St. Joe, Indiana. The SDI plant is in the middle of cornfields, and only has rail access, no major water sources nearby, and to my knowledge, utilizes scrap metal quite heavily in their process. They have at least one additional mill, closer to Fort Wayne, on the CF&E, that rolls rail (railroad rail). The mill south of Butler would be about the size of the parcel being looked at near Durand.
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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by MSchwiebert »

Like the previous posters have said, this (if it comes to pass) will almost assuredly be an electric furnace "mini-mill". To look at the footprint of something existing, look at the Northstar/Bluescope mill between Delta & Wauseon Ohio. I'd also strongly suspect the siting will be where there is multiple railroad access. Using Delta as the example again, while NS (former Conrail main to Chicago) has much of the business, the Indiana & Ohio (former DT&I) is a key player as they carry the inbound "pig iron" from Cincinnati where it is offloaded from Ohio River Barges.

Finally something else to keep in mind is that a key commodity used at plants like this is inbound scrap metal. Given how close Durand is to manufacturing areas that have scrap as a part of the production process, I'd suspect that most of that would be trucked in. A friend of mine drives truck for a company that hauls scrap and he takes loads from all over lower Michigan to Northstar/Bluescope. On the other hand, it'll be interesting to see if there's enough scrap to go around locally for these mills. If there's an abundance, it could mean that rail shipments might actually decrease as the new plant might absorb the "excess" that is currently being railed out to other markets. Or if the market is tight, some might get railed in. Time will tell.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by atrainguy60 »

Interesting. I notice these minimills have bit of other smaller steel related businesses clustered around them. For example, Steel Dynamics in Butler has Heidtman Steel Products, Paragon Steel, Magic Coil Products, etc, immediately to it's east, and all have rail spurs that appear active at the time of the Google Imagery. North Star Steel in Delta has Worthington Steel immediately to it's west, and Fulton County Processing to the north appears steel related. Am I right that these are all individual independent companies, and that for some reason they tend to spring up around mini mills, or am I wrong? Maybe we'll get more than just a minimill then if one goes up in Durand.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by MSchwiebert »

Yes, they are ancillary operations independent of the mill. For example Fulton County Processing slits & pickles the steel per end customer specifications. Slitting is where they will take a coil of a standard width and cut it to a width the customer needs and "re-roll" it. Pickling is a chemical process that removes the scale etc. from the steel.
http://www.fcpltd.com/

Worthington likewise is a intermediate processor of steel from the mill at Delta.

atrainguy60 wrote:Interesting. I notice these minimills have bit of other smaller steel related businesses clustered around them. For example, Steel Dynamics in Butler has Heidtman Steel Products, Paragon Steel, Magic Coil Products, etc, immediately to it's east, and all have rail spurs that appear active at the time of the Google Imagery. North Star Steel in Delta has Worthington Steel immediately to it's west, and Fulton County Processing to the north appears steel related. Am I right that these are all individual independent companies, and that for some reason they tend to spring up around mini mills, or am I wrong? Maybe we'll get more than just a minimill then if one goes up in Durand.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Jim_c »

Nice destination for the scrap from Beacon in TC. GLC to AA.
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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Raildudes dad »

Looks like it going to Columbia City IN.

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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by Proto48Patrick »

the electric furnace minimill will help drive(assure) the new Thetford CMS gas fired plant too. As Im sure the two entities have been in contact for quite some time
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Re: Propsed Steel manufacturing in/near Durand

Unread post by 80mac »

Proto48Patrick wrote:the electric furnace minimill will help drive(assure) the new Thetford CMS gas fired plant too. As Im sure the two entities have been in contact for quite some time
The last that I heard the Thetford project was put on hold.

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