Gov. Dayton to Essar: Pay contractors now

Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL-Minnesota) PHOTO: Easy Stand, Flickr Creative Commons license

Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL-Minnesota) PHOTO: Easy Stand, Flickr CC

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton says that if Essar Steel Minnesota doesn’t pay outstanding bills to its contractors by the end of the businesses day on Wednesday, he will call the state’s $66 million loan in full.

Essar seeks to build a $2.6 billion taconite plant on the western Mesabi Iron Range, but has been plagued by sketchy financing and delayed payments to contractors for years. Now the global downturn in iron ore appears to again delay the project. Most major contractors appeared to leave the site in mid-November.

This is the press release from the governor’s office:

ST. PAUL, MN – On Wednesday, November 25th, Governor Mark Dayton spoke by phone with Madhu Vuppuluri, President and CEO of Essar Steel Minnesota. Governor Dayton informed Mr. Vuppuluri that if the company does not pay its Minnesota vendors, in full, by close of business on Wednesday, December 2nd, he will call the state’s $66 million loan and demand its immediate repayment.

During last week’s phone call, Governor Dayton also informed Mr. Vuppuluri that if the company pays its Minnesota vendors by Wednesday, but fails to stay current on its payments to vendors in the future, he will again call the state’s loan and demand its immediate repayment.

On October 12, 2015, Governor Dayton was assured by representatives of Essar Steel Minnesota, and the CEO of its parent company, Essar Global Fund Ltd., that Essar’s vendors would be paid in full by October 31st. However, those assurances were not fulfilled.

Comments

  1. If Essar can’t pay its contractors, how will it be able to pay back its loans?

  2. YoungRanger32 says

    How about we start preventing foreign companies/countries from coming to NE Minnesota to Rob All of our resources and collect massive profits? I would rather see the state or county running some of the mines. I would rather have our state collect the PROFITS and Taxes from our resource rich area so the people in our area could have a higher standard of living. We have got all of theses resources around here and yet our median income remains around 30k per year which is poor considering the median state income is around 50k per year. Also, Glencore Xstrata is the company that is the Owner of Polymet. Just a bunch of rich, greedy, polluting, evil bastards showcased in the Documentary here – Stealing Africa …. Why Poverty . https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=glencore+robbing+africa We are slowly becoming economically similar to Africa here and pretty soon I think we are going to have to Make a Documentary Called “ROBBING THE IRON RANGE!” Wake Up You Political Idiots!

    • Independent says

      Glencore is not the owner of Polymet. It’s possible a company like glencore could buy Polymet and they currently are shareholders of Polymet stock but let’s not throw around misinformation, there is enough of that in this debate already.

    • Independent says

      Government run mining operations…yikes I see there are still some socialist around.

      • YoungRanger32 says

        Hey Wise Guy! The reason we have socialism these days is because throughout the years your bought and paid for elected officials deregulated capitalism and corporations were allowed to become monopolies which have created massive amounts of poverty. Capitalism which was once regulated became deregulated and in return Corporate Monopolies were created and deregulated to bring money, power, control, and resources into the hands of a few which in return has made millions of poor people poor and rapidly expanded the size of the government in return leading to higher taxes for the average worker. This has lead us to Socialism which I’m not for, but since nobody wants to break up and regulate the corporate monopolies and since they keep expanding we have little options left. If we cannot regulate corporations to pay their workers fair wages and benefits we might as well mine our own land and produce something instead of just taking from people and collecting the piddly mining taxes compared to the companies profits. Maybe the Gov. should learn how to produce something instead of just taking from people! Maybe if the state or county controlled some of the mines things like this wouldn’t be happening. http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/mining/3702114-us-steel-leaders-bonus-irks-minnesota-lawmakers

        Also, look at what Ziegler in Mt. Iron did to their workers benefits a few years back. They all got screwed while Ziegler had and spent hundreds of millions of dollars expanding many of their facilities knowingly anticipating a mining/economic downturn.

  3. Big deal, just more bullshit political rhetoric! If I went to the bank and asked for money to build a four bedroom house and a garage, then went back and said I was only building a garage That I would get an extension? HELL NO! Make essar pay the money owed RIGHT NOW or take their asses to court and sue them for ALL money, plus accrued interest!!!!

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