Mesabi Metallics lost critical state mineral leases last year, leaving an even bigger question mark over its half-built, controversial project in Nashwauk. But the company says it will finish the plant.
NASHWAUK, MINN. – An industrial resurrection seems afoot at a long-promising but snakebitten $2 billion-plus taconite project. On a crisp fall morning, a construction site in this Iron Range city teemed with workers aiming to complete a venture given up for dead by just about everybody but its owner, Mesabi Metallics.
After years of missed deadlines and financial failures, Mesabi last year permanently lost crucial state mineral leases. But Mesabi still controls private land leases in Nashwauk. And it has renewed construction of a project that was only half built when work shut down during a 2016 bankruptcy.
The project is now 70% complete, said Larry Sutherland, Mesabi Metallics’ chief operating officer. “I get all of the history and angst over this project,” he said. Still, “no matter what people believe, it is going to be completed. There is no question.” Mesabi’s corporate parent, India’s Essar Group, is committed to spending the roughly $600 million needed to finish the venture, Sutherland said.
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