STEEL COMPANY SELECTS 44-ACRE SITE ON AOR FOR REBAR MANUFACTURING FACILITY

72 Steel, a Brooklyn, New York-based company, held a groundbreaking in May for their new steel rebar-manufacturing facility in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, along G&W’s Aliquippa & Ohio Railroad (AOR). The site, located 16 miles north of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, was once the location for the J&L Steel Mill, one of the largest steel mills in the country during its operation from 1910 until 1988.

72 Steel will produce 500,000 tons of rebar steel annually for a variety of industries and will be rail-served by AOR. The company credits the 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with spurring their plans for Aliquippa. They plan to use “energy-saving and environmental protection technologies” during production, including air and water pollution control equipment and an electric-arc furnace from Italian technology supplier Tenova. The project’s initial investment of $218 million is expected to create more than 300 full-time jobs – with production anticipated to begin sometime in 2025. The company toured sites in West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina before settling on Aliquippa in Beaver County due to the rail and river access as well as the Pittsburgh region’s history of steelmaking.