Nucor completed construction in 2023 with its approximately US$650 million investment to modernize and expand production capacity at its Gallatin flat sheet mill in Ghent, Kentucky. 

In the same year, the company shipped 23 million 272,000 tons of steel, virtually unchanged from the previous year.

The Gallatin project increased the mill’s production capacity from 1.6 to 2.8 million tons per year. 

This allows the Gallatin plant to cast new, thicker slabs and wider coils, expanding its product capabilities to serve new markets, such as API (American Petroleum Institute) grade pipelines and new opportunities in the heavy equipment sector.

Nucor reported a 16.4% year-on-year decline in revenues in 2023, to US$34.713 billion. 

While its earnings fell 40.5% in the same year, to US$4.525 billion, its assets grew 8.8%, to US$35.340 billion.

Nucor

Earlier, the company completed construction of its state-of-the-art heavy plate plant valued at approximately $1.7 billion in Brandenburg, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. 

The new heavy plate mill produced its first heavy plate in December 2022, completed final commissioning and began shipping tons to customers in the first quarter of 2023. 

Still Nucor Steel Brandenburg is in its commissioning phase and the company estimates that the mill will ship approximately 500,000 tons. in 2024. 

It also projects that the plant will be capable of producing 1.2 million tons per year of steel plate products. 

Wind towers

With the capacity to manufacture almost all the different types of plate consumed in the U.S., Nucor believes this mill will enable it to position itself as the preferred supplier in the domestic plate market. 

Another of its estimates is that domestic demand for steel plate will grow in the coming years as wind farms are permitted and developed more frequently. 

Steel plate is essential for onshore and offshore wind tower construction, as are steel reinforcing bars.