It came down to geology.
"We are ideally situated to serve the Marcellus Shale," said V&M Star President Roger Lindgren.
What Lindgren is referring to is a vast underground layer of rock shale that underlays Eastern Ohio, across the Finger Lakes region of New York, under western Pennsylvania, south to West Virginia and even into Virginia. It measures from a few feet to 900 feet thick.
The shale and other layers above and below together form an impervious cap to an enormous reservoir of natural gas trapped in huge pockets.
It is the economic potential of tapping that store of energy that made the Youngstown-Girard site the best candidate for the $650 million investment of a new rolling mill.
"We are going to build a state of the art mill here in Youngstown and Girard to supply the growing market for the smaller OD [outside diameter] pipe used for the shale drilling," said Lindgren. "It will be high-grade pipe for the very challenging requirements of shale drilling."
Geology aside, there were other reasons V&M chose to bring steel back to the Steel Valley.
"It is an advantage logistics-wise to have what we refer to as a model site," he said. "We have the steelmaking here, we have excess steelmaking that will be used in this facility, so a one-stop model site was a very good opportunity. Obviously we knew we could benefit from the skill of the workforce, and the surrounding workforce people."
Lindgren also cites the open arms of the local community.
"We have some strong local business partnerships here, and we have enjoyed the very strong support of the community and local public officials," he said. "We felt very welcome here."
As for the impending job opportunities, Lindgren stresses that "The steel business is not a low tech business. We make a finished product. We make steel pipe, not steel that is sent away for someone else to finish. We will start out by hiring engineers and technical support staff. In about 6 months we'll start hiring maintenance people, technicians, and other support specialists. And then eventually we'll hire production workers."
Lindgren recommends those who aspire to work at V & M stay in school, and acquire the knowledge necessary to work in the highly technical industry.
"We work with a high degree of automation," he said. "And that is necessary to do that to produce the type of product required by the market today."
Prospective employees "are going to need some skills," he said.
Hiring is expected to be done through Ohio One-Stop, no hiring will be done at the plant according to Lindgren. Of the 350 new jobs, 230 will be directly employed by V&M, the rest will work for specialized contractors.
The first pipe is scheduled to be produced in the fourth quarter of 2011. Lindgren said construction will start immediately.
