Representatives from Infra-Metals signed papers with the Southern Ohio Port Authority on Friday to officially transfer land in New Boston over to the company to build a new USD 13 million steel fabrication and distribution plant. The signing was the end result of five years of planning and development.
Infra-Metals Project Manager Michael Dean said Infra-Metals is owned by the publicly-traded Reliance Steel, which is the largest distributor of metals in the United States and all of North America, and the second largest distribution company in the world.
Mr Dean said that "Several thousand tons go through our buildings each year. People think when they have to get a two-by-four they have to go out to Mennard's. Well, when people have to buy a lot of beams they come to us. That's who we are. We're the steel version of that."
Along with steel supply, the company also does first-step fabrication to prepare the steel for job sites.
Mr Dean said that "We serve the industrial market, the commercial market, we also sell a fair amount of steel into the transportation industry, coal mining and conveyance. We're very excited about the fracking and natural gas and some of the alternative energies that are starting to come into the Ohio Valley in a very prominent way."
With facilities primarily located along the east coast, Dean said the company is now moving more into the midwest. One of the things that attracted the company to southern Ohio is its placement along the Ohio River and the access it allows for barge transports.
He said that "We knew we wanted to be on the Ohio River. We knew this section of the country was a section none of the plants was servicing well. We were either too far away or it was too expensive to truck steel here to the end user.”
The deal was almost lost entirely after a bad first impression initially knocked New Boston out of the running for Infra-Metals. Dean said it was former SOPA chairman Bob Walton, Sr., and local developer Don Hadsell who convinced the company to give them another look. To further entice the company, they were granted property tax abatements by the state of Ohio and the village of New Boston.
