Jindal’s quest for steel

By Deon Roberts, Online Editor

Louisiana was the loser last year as it competed to lure a steel company. Alabama beat out Louisiana for the $3.1 billion ThyssenKrupp mill.

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was governor then. Now, Gov. Bobby Jindal is in pursuit of luring a steel company to the same site in St. James Parish that ThyssenKrupp was interested in.

Jindal took a trip Wednesday to South Carolina to lure Charlotte. N.C.-based steelmaker Nucor Corp. to Louisiana to build a $2 billion plant.

Here’s an except from an Associated Press story:

Jindal said he met with Nucor Corp.’s chief executive Dan DiMicco and others, and took a tour of the Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker’s South Carolina plant. Jindal called the meeting “very productive” and involved negotiations over financial incentives, as he tries to persuade the firm to build the plant in St. James Parish instead of a location overseas.

“We’re very competitive with these other locations,” Jindal said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press before his return flight to Baton Rouge.

The company has said it will announce its plans by the end of the year. Jindal said he was told a decision could be made within months.•