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Tense Essar negotiations with Dayton, contractors
UPDATE: Today, Gov. Dayton’s spokesperson Matt Swenson issued this statement, which indicates that Essar is issuing new capital into its Nashwauk project: “Governor Mark Dayton spoke Thursday afternoon with IRRRB Commissioner Mark Phillips and Cathy Polasky from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), to discuss the status of Essar Steel Minnesota’s payments…
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Gov. Dayton to Essar: Pay contractors now
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…
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Essar Steel Algoma files for protection from creditors
Essar Steel Algoma — sister company to Essar Steel Minnesota in Nashwauk — announced it would file for bankruptcy creditor protection in Canada and the United States today. The steel mill is located in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and is part of Essar’s plans to use pellets made at the taconite plant under construction now on the…
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Range War: Essar, Cliffs clash shows Mesabi at crossroads
~ ~ ~ Speculation can be ignored, but one must reckon with concrete. Here along Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range one finds many messy versions of the truth surrounding Essar Minnesota’s new taconite mine under construction near Nashwauk. While controversial, actual activity at Essar shows that new mining will happen on the grounds of the…
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Gov. Dayton, officials meet with Essar to negotiate repayment
On Monday, Gov. Mark Dayton and Iron Range lawmakers, along with officials from the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, met with representatives of Essar Minnesota. Essar is building a new taconite mine on the western Mesabi Iron Range, but scuttled initial plans to build a value-added steel mill on the site, all while…
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Steel-making shortfall spurs Essar scrutiny
It was supposed to be an innovative integrated steel mill. That remains the fundamental shortfall of the Essar Steel Minnesota project near Nashwauk on the western Mesabi Iron Range. Work continues, to be sure, but Essar Minnesota will initially open as a straight-forward taconite plant. Perhaps next summer. Perhaps later, depending on who you talk to. That’s the trouble.…
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Essar seeks 3-year deal to avoid paying back $67 million
It was no secret that Essar Steel would be requesting more time to meet the provisions of a state grant that provided critical early infrastructure to its huge new mine near Nashwauk, Minnesota. The company has until Oct. 1 — about two weeks from now — to produce value-added iron products as it originally proposed.…
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Financial Times explores Essar project
The new Essar mine project near Nashwauk has attracted the attention of the Financial Times of London. This summer, Financial Times reporter Aaron Stanley visited the Essar construction site and interviewed both local and international sources on the conditions facing this long-awaited new iron mine on the Mesabi Iron Range. You can read the Aaron…
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Essar ramps up Nashwauk construction
Construction is accelerating at the long awaited $1.9 billion Essar iron mine near Nashwauk, while Essar now says it’s optimistic about producing direct reduced iron products here. In a tour of the site on May 21 with Mitch Brunfelt, Essar’s assistant general counsel and director of government and public relations, I took pictures and observed…
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A close look at Essar construction
Yesterday, Dan Kraker of Minnesota Public Radio filed a report about Essar Minnesota, the new taconite plant under construction near Nashwauk, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range. In essence, the long awaited project — funded in part by massive state and regional investments — has reached the critical mass needed to see completion (as soon…
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Cliffs CEO details DRI hopes, swipes at Essar
Cliffs Natural Resources CEO Lourenco Goncalves spoke yesterday morning at the company’s annual community breakfast in Virginia, Minnesota. WDIO was there: To stay strong in the steel industry, the company is very seriously considering making DRI grade pellets, which have a higher iron content. Northshore Mining has already tested this possibility. “We are working on three…
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‘Free community college’ not free, but necessary
For me, one of the biggest difference-makers in my life was going to college. What success I’ve found comes not only from the degree I earned, but from the growth I experienced trying to get that degree. Like many of my fellow 1990s high school graduates, I was taught that if you had the will,…
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Essar seeks legislation to avoid paying back public funds
Last week, Northern Minnesota media sources, with help from new lobbying activity by Essar Steel Minnesota, finally connected the dots that this proposed new Iron Range taconite mine would really, truly not build a steel mill with its project as originally planned. As such, Essar is due to run afoul of the agreement that brought $67 million in…
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Star Tribune pens glowing Essar Steel update
Today’s front page feature in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota’s newspaper of record, was a Dee DePass story entitled “After seven years, Essar’s giant Iron Range project finds a groove.” The story is about progress at Essar Steel Minnesota, the spinoff of Essar Global, an Indian company which seeks to build a new taconite plant on…
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Essar restarts construction of new west Range mine
Essar Steel has restarted construction on its new taconite mine and processing plant near Nashwauk, Minnesota. This according to a Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014 story in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. What’s not known is who is financing the India-based company’s sometimes beleaguered Iron Range project, or if the financing package will ultimately include another partner.…