Haverhill is located along old US 52 west of Ironton and southeast of Portsmouth.

 

Sun Coke set for expansion

 

Notes --

1. Sun Coke Company is expanding, with a second set of 100 ovens. The announcement was made in February, and the private bricklaying ceremony is set for May 21. A total of 49 permanent jobs and 700 construction jobs will be created. Work is underway currently.

2. Sun Coke began talks about building in the area in the late 1990s. The original plant was completed in 2005 with 100 ovens that produce 550,000 tons of screened blast furnace coke per year. Steam, a by-product of the coke ovens, is sold to the adjacent Sunock phenol manufacturing facility.

2a. The expansion will allow the plant to produce more than 100,000 tons of material annually.

3. The estimated project cost is $230 million and full production is expected in the second half of 2008. Two companies have already signed agreements to purchase the coke for the next 15 years.

4. The new facility, like the original, will capture waste heat from the oevens to produce and supply steam to a 67-megawatt turbine that will provide a net average of 46 megawatts of power into the regional power market

 

Article information: "Sun Coke set for expansion, By Mark Shaffer, The Ironton Tribune, May 15, 2007"

Project adds 100 ovens

 

Notes --

1. Construction of the new bank of 100 ovens began in March. The $230 million project was "big enough" that Governor Strickland paid a visit.

2. The original plant was completed in 2005 with 100 ovens with 550,000 tons of screened blast furnace coke capacity per year. The additional ovens, which will go on-line in June 2008, will produce an additional 550,000 tons. It will bring 45-50 permanent jobs.

2a. Two companies will be purchasing coke at the plant for the next 15 years.

2b. Future expansions could occur: the plant was originally designed and permitted for 400 ovens. It is all dependent on the coke market.

3. Governor Strickland believes that Ohio's future rests in part on becoming more of an energy producer. Ohio is fifth in the nation in consuming energy, and fourth in using that energy for industrial production.

 

Article information: "Project adds 100 ovens, By Mark Shaffer, The Ironton Tribune , May 22, 2007"

Not sure where else to put this... I'll say that I am definitely intrigued!

 

From Crain's:

 

Strickland says a big development is afoot

 

By JAY MILLER

 

2:29 pm, June 26, 2007

 

Gov. Ted Strickland teased a sold-out City Club of Cleveland audience today by saying he expects to announce soon that the state has landed a $2 billion investment by a major employer.

I wonder if it is the Rolls-Royce plant that Ohio has been trying land?

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=11862.0

Where is Van Wert?

Where is Van Wert?

 

Near Lima

 

I wonder if it is the Rolls-Royce plant that Ohio has been trying land?

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=11862.0

 

I thought you were joking, but hey, maybe they're going to take over some of the Ford facilities that are closing in NEO?

Where is Van Wert?

 

Where most of my relatives live

I thought you were joking, but hey, maybe they're going to take over some of the Ford facilities that are closing in NEO?

 

Or in other parts of the state, too. "Ford: Where Abandonment Is Job #1"

It's been so long since Ohio has had some good employment news....can't wait to hear what it is!  :clap:  I was just thinking yesterday about how well Indiana has been doing landing big projects (Honda Plant and the new transmission plant north of Indy) and wondering why Ohio can't keep up with the Hoosiers.

 

 

 

why does everything have to be a damn secret...out with it!  I want to know what's going on...I demand it as a voting citizen of the State of Ohio.

Would this really be all that great of news if it's just a car plant in BFE? How is that going to do anything except encourage sprawl out from Ohio's big 3?

Would this have something to do with the old Piketon uranium plant plans?    I doubted due to the fact I thought that was made public already.

Would this really be all that great of news if it's just a car plant in BFE? How is that going to do anything except encourage sprawl out from Ohio's big 3?

 

Honestly that's all I'm expecting.  And no, the prospect doesn't really excite me all that much.

 

Or, maybe it will be a $2 billion skyscraper for Microsoft's new headquarters in downtown Cleveland.  But I think the former.

Well, honestly, why care about development in cities anymore? We have clearly given up on increasing our population and jobs.

 

As said above, lets just place some XYZ Car Plant, Inc. in BFE, Ohio where its only 250 miles to the next major town.

Jobs are jobs...while it may be nicer that they are in the cities, they are needed everywhere.  Ohio rural areas are REALLY struggling, and if this is news that can help out those portions of the state (and state coffers)...I say GREAT!

 

"A rising tide floats all boats"

Well for quite some time I lived in Lawrence County, Ohio - the very most southern county in the state. The area was (and still is) struggling quite a bit with no jobs and minimal growth (approx. 1,000 more residents since the 2000 Census). The last time the highway was paved was late 50's early 60's (possibly 1962).

 

You are correct, jobs are needed - I just hope everything turns out being beneficial.

"A rising tide floats all boats"

 

That works only if you have boat. If it were true, then inner-city residents wouldn't be chronically poor. Jobs without physical access to those with limited means benefit only those with means. Without a boat (or, in Ohio, a car), you drown.

^see hurricane Katrina

That's a different comparison...where that phrase doesn't neccisarily hold true.  But when the outlook for rural areas of Ohio improves, so does the outlook for the entire state, the inverse is also true.  We just cannot forget the many people in our state who don't live in the 3 C's or other metros, they need help too.

The question to me is how many jobs will this create, and how close to how many unemployed people will it be?  If it is located in the middle of a vast rural area, as so many of these mega projects that the state pursues are, the answer will be "not many jobs compared to the 2 billion investment, and it won't be located near lots of people, anyway".  The result won't be the tackling of lots of unemployment, it will be the creation of a company town somewhere in the middle of greenfields.  A massive plant with a few thousand employees, and of course the spin-off development, primarily lots of vinyl sided crap on treeless streets with a Walmart for a downtown doesn't really get me excited about our state's bright future.  Hopefully it will be more than that, though.

I think there is nothing wrong if this is auto based. There are many people looking and needing that type of job. I just hope the state continues to work and achieve more balance in its economy over time.

There are more than a half-million people in Ohio who don't own cars. And 90 percent, nearly all of whom are low-income, them live in cities, according to the Census. At least in the Cleveland-Akron area, only 8-15 percent of the region's available jobs are within a 40-minute transit trip.

 

So why put a major employer in a lightly populated area where low-income residents are spread thinly and, yet, I'll bet many have cars? Why do that when the dominant number of low-income residents are concentrated in urban areas yet can't reach jobs placed at the urban fringe or in a rural area? I'm not saying we shouldn't work to bring more jobs to low-income, rural areas. But if we want to make a big dent (and $2 billion is a pretty big dent), then put the investment within a 40-minute transit ride of where the greatest number of low-income, car-less Ohioans are. I think they call that good planning.

I don't think anyone meant that there was anything wrong with it being auto based, or industrial for that matter.  The point is that rural megaprojects promote sprawl more than they reduce unemployment.  Anyway, I'd rather just wait and see what it actually is before I say any more about it.

 

Edit: KJP just made my point better than I have.

could we be lucky enough...if this is auto based that they would take over the soon to be closed Ford plant?

If it is Rolls Royce, I don't think it would necessarily be auto based (actually, I don't think it would be)....I think the Rolls-Royce plant in Indy makes jet engines and employs 4,000 people and has meant a lot of engineering and research jobs and facilities for the state of Indiana. 

 

Also, the global headquarters for Rolls-Royce Energy Systems is in Mt. Vernon, OH, where they design and manufacture turbines, modify jet engines to serve as gas turbines for use in oil and gas fields, and stuff like that.  And just last year, Rolls-Royce decided to headquarter their Fuel Cell division in Canton. 

 

So even if it is "just" a manufacturing plant, I think it could be a great opportunity to bring some high tech jobs and also work in high tech fields to Ohio, in addition to the manufacturing jobs. 

 

In regard to location, I think a manufacturing plant more or less can locate anywhere in the US (or for that matter, many places in the world) and achieve similar results.  So if the state would try to steer the company into a place they aren't interested in, they would just likely locate to another state that would provide them with exactly what they wanted.  Yeah, I think it stinks, but IMO the potential good from this amount of investment should outweigh the negatives...regardless of where it is located.  But as KJP points out, it definitely illustrates the lack of importance place on good planning in the US as a whole. 

 

And, although on a much bigger scale, Honda's investment in Ohio has resulted in suppliers in 52 of the state's 88 counties.  So depending on what this investment is, it could have a much greater impact than just where this investment is made.

 

I'm really trying to figure out what this $2 billion investment could be....to put things into perspective, the Honda plant that ended up going to Indiana is stated to be a $550 million investment, so this thing, whatever it is, is nearly 4x the investment. (Maybe they are including anticipated spin-off development in the $2 billion figure???)

Wow, RR has a real presence here in the midwest.  I had no idea....

 

Dffly makes a good point about multiplier effects of a big plant or operation, like the Honda plant.  Add the Toyota plant in Kentucky, and one can see a whole region of foreign auto suppliers developing.  This shows up in some maps from Kentucky on the auto parts investments in the region....

 

 

 

 

And the spin off from the Toyota plant in terms of new foreign auto parts plants in Kentucky (one could do a similar map for Ohio, probably)

 

 

 

 

 

Their midwest presence was made through aquisitions of other companies. Their Indy operation was the old Alison Engineering plant that was sold by GM to Rolls in the mid 90s. That plant dated back to the early days of aviation and automobiles when Mr. Alison (I forget his first name) established a auto plant in his native Indy.

 

The Mt. Vernon plant was the old Cooper Bessmer plant. Started in Ohio in the 1800s and eventually grew and was acquired by numerous companies and was HQ'd out of Houston before Rolls purchased it in approx 6 years ago.

 

BOth companies were large clients of Rolls prior to the purchase. Rolls has a history of acquiring smaller operations and growing from there (like a bank does) as opposed to builiding a plant from scratch, like other automakers.

Hmmm...I wonder if this is related to the Coal to Liquids plant (Baard Energy) near Youngstown.

It'll be interesting to find out.

Could the big announcement have something to do with this?

 

Ohio Lt. Gov. on secret trip to Russia

Posted by Mark Rollenhagen

(Cleveland) Plain Dealer

July 12, 2007 17:32PM

 

Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher slipped out of Ohio this week on a top-secret mission to Russia.

 

He's there in his role as director of the Ohio Department of Development, trying to land a deal.

 

"It is indeed a business trip and it could mean certainly a major, major investment for Ohio," said Kimber Perfect, a spokeswoman for the development department ...

 

... More at http://blog.cleveland.com/plaindealer/2007/07/ohio_lt_gov_on_secret_trip_to.html

That spokeswoman's name is, well, perfect!

^^I was thinking the same thing when I read that this morning...probably.

I'll bet he leases the turnpike to a group of Russian oil tycoons for $2 billion.  :lol:

I heard the Russian dude is going to build a $2 billion Strip Mall of America!

That spokeswoman's name is, well, perfect!

 

Yeah I bet she gets the "Little Miss Perfect" comment a lot.

... a $2 billion vodka distillery adjacent to the Budweiser towers?

Lt. governor holds discussions with Russian steel maker

Advertisement

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher traveled to Russia in hopes of winning business for Ohio from a Russian steel maker and its billionaire chairman.

 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OH_LT_GOVERNOR_RUSSIA_OHOL-?SITE=WBNSTV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I think this could be great news for Warren, Ohio. This could potentially create many more jobs for the area, whose economy is severly lacking.

 

Even if it isn't WCI, this is great news for Ohio!

Governor Ted Strickland says he is "very, very very hopeful" and thinks the stage may be set for a big announcement soon about new steel jobs.

Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher is back in Ohio after meeting the Chairman of Russian Steelmaker MMK.

 

Reports suggest MMK could be interested in buying an Ohio steel company. The most frequently mentioned company is WCI Steel of Warren.

 

Strickland also explained his new executive order to honor deeds of lakeshore property owners. He calls it a "common sense" compromise that will protect the shoreline and preserve property owners rights.

 

Strickland says the state could possibly play a role in a Medical Mart/Convention Center complex in Cleveland. He met with local officeholders Monday. He tells Tom Beres, "It's something worthy of pursuing. I think the state could see itself working in a partnership to accompish something of this magnitude."

 

Strickland dismissed speculation he might get serious consideration as a Vice Presidential candidate because of Ohio's key role in the upcoming election. He said, "I see no circumstance that would have me be part of a national ticket. I intend to end my political career by being the Governor of Ohio."

 

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=71209

God I hope he doesn't become a candidate for the vice president!  we need him here!

^You've gotta admit though...that would be kind of cool

he would be a good choice for a VP, ohio is a must win state and that could only help.  Basically if you win FL, OH, MI, you will be the next president.

I think winning California's 50+ electoral college votes are job #1 for any presidential candidate.

That's a decided state from the start though.  FL, PA, OH and MI are extremely important to win.

Word. Cali only votes conservative when celebrities run for office.

I think winning California's 50+ electoral college votes are job #1 for any presidential candidate.

 

texas has a lot of electoral votes as well, so does new york, but neither is in play in most elections.

... although New York might be in this election ... or at least has a better shot of being in play than it typically is.

Source says Russian company eyeing Haverhill

If agreement reached, Magnitogorsk could employ 1,400

By Rick Greene/The Ironton Tribune

Friday, July 20, 2007 10:28 AM CDT

 

The Russian steel company that has been negotiating with the state to build a steel mill is considering a location in Scioto County near the Sun Coke plant, The Ironton Tribune has learned.  A source close to the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the company — Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works — is considering a roughly $2 billion investment in Haverhill that would include a mill that would produce automobile body sheets and employ between 1,000 and 1,400 workers.  “The scope of this is beyond belief,” the source said.

 

Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, or MMK, is the largest enterprise of the Russian steel industry and accounts for about 20 percent of all steel products sold on the domestic market, according to its Web site.  MMK is a fully integrated steel-making operation and produces the widest range of steel products among steel producers in Russia.  About half of the company's output is exported worldwide.  Although the state is still negotiating with the company and no plans are finalized, the source said it appears the company is attracted to the location in the Hanging Rock corridor.

 

This story was first reported at www.irontontribune.com

Local reports are stating that the Russian company is looking to locate in Haverhill, Ohio.

I definitely had to google that to find out where it was and it wasn't where I expected at all (on the Ohio River between Ironton and Portsmouth).  Interestingly, it appears to be in Strickland's old Congressional district, although I'm sure that part of the state could definitely use the economic development.