Two States, One Supply Line: Mesabi Metallics From Iron Range to Iowa Mill

The Minnesota half: a pit that took two decades

The Nashwauk site has a long, patient history. Butler Taconite ran there until it shut on June 28, 1985, as the Mesabi Tribune recorded. Essar, the Indian industrial group, later took on a new plant there, went through a bankruptcy in 2016, as MPR reporting recounted, and reorganized the effort under the Mesabi Metallics name. Most of the timeline is one of delays. The last month is the part that finally moved.

The Export-Import Bank of the United States lent the project $770 million, according to MPR and KAXE, and EXIM said on September 17 that up to $10 billion in potential financing is on the table. The first blast came the same day. Pellets have not shipped yet. Chief executive Joe Broking told KAXE the company would try to hit the end of 2026 and conceded that the start could slip into January.

What the Nashwauk operation makes matters more than how big it is. Mesabi is building for DR-grade pellets, a purer iron ore product meant for direct reduced iron and, from there, electric arc furnaces. Twin Cities Business counts only two other Minnesota operations making that grade. Our companion piece on the pellet itself walks through the chemistry, and it is a better story than it sounds.

The Iowa half: a mill that exists on paper

The steel plant is the headline, and it is also the least finished part. Here is what outlets reported on September 28, 2026, before the Oval Office event: about $15 billion in investment, a first phase of 7.5 million tons of steel a year, 10 million tons at full build, commercial production in 2030, 1,750 permanent Iowa jobs and 5,000 to 6,000 construction jobs, per KCRG and Fox News. CBS News reported a White House official describing it as the first mega steel plant built in the country since the 1960s.

The exact site had not been named in anything published before the announcement. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, whose district includes the area, posted on Facebook that it would be built somewhere in Lee County, KCRG reported. If you check a map, Lee County is the far southeastern corner of Iowa, pressed against the Mississippi River. It is also the only Iowa county with two county seats, Fort Madison and Keokuk, a split that dates to 1847 and a tidy way of settling an argument. Whether ore will actually travel south by water is something I could not confirm from a primary source, so treat it as geography, not a plan.

The open question: what kind of furnace

Here the reporting gets blurry, and it is worth saying so plainly. Fox News described the Iowa project as a large-scale integrated facility, unlike many newer American mills, which are smaller electric arc furnace plants. Yet the whole logic of DR-grade pellets points toward direct reduction and electric furnaces. Earlier, Iron Range Today reported the company was permitted for a direct reduced iron plant and electric arc furnace on the Iron Range, and had registered a Kentucky subsidiary while it scouted sites. We will know the real design when permits are filed. Until then, any article that states the furnace type with confidence is guessing.

There is also a proposed Minnesota expansion on the table. KAXE reported plans for another $5 billion that would lift pellet capacity from 7 to 18 million tons a year and add a $1.9 billion direct reduced iron plant, with permit filings targeted for the end of 2026. None of that is built. All of it is plausible. My honest read is that the Minnesota operation is real, the Iowa mill is a serious intention with serious federal backing, and 2030 is a long way off in steel years.

Why the name sounds older than the company

The company borrowed its name from the ridge, and the ridge's name is older than any of this. MNopedia traces Mesabi to the Ojibwe Misaabe Wajiw, which it translates as Big Man Mountain, and the range's ore has shipped since 1892, when the Merritt family got its first load out, per the Minnesota Historical Society. That is a lot of weight for a corporate name to carry. Our history piece follows the Nashwauk ground from Butler Taconite to the blast.

My favorite detail from the whole package came from an 80-year-old named Al Guddeck, who worked at Butler for 20 years. He told MPR his grandmother used to go out first thing and wipe the ore dust off her clothesline, and never complained, because the mines meant money. The red dust is back in Nashwauk. Somewhere, a clothesline is about to need wiping again.