Nucor Louisiana DRI Plant Exceeding Expectations

A large portion of the recent Nucor 1st Quarter earnings conference call with analysts was devoted to the progress of the company’s DRI (direct reduced iron) project which is called Nucor Louisiana. First Quarter 2014 was the first full quarter that the equipment was up and running.  Nucor Louisiana is home to the largest single DRI furnace in the world at 2.5 million tons per year.

Management gushed about the 455,000 tons of DRI produced by Nucor Louisiana during the quarter. According to Nucor’s CEO John Ferriola, the facility was able to attain peak operating rates above 90 percent during the quarter. More importantly, the company reported metallization rates of 96 percent (Fe) and carbon content exceeding 4 percent. The high Fe target rates were achieved after in one week. To put that into perspective, the Trinidad plant took five weeks to reach the same targeted Fe metallization rate. It took LA 11 weeks to reach their nameplate targeted production rate while Trinidad took 26 weeks to reach theirs.