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1993 – today
Founded: Incorporated in August 1993 in Indiana, headquartered in Fort Wayne at 6714 Pointe Inverness Way. Three former Nucor executives — Keith E. Busse, Mark D. Millett and Richard P. Teets, Jr., the team that had built Nucor's Crawfordsville thin-slab minimill — set out to start a new American steel company without corporate backing. By September 1993 Busse had raised about $370 million (some accounts give the financing as $400 million; $110,000 of it was the founders' own money).
Founders: Keith E. Busse (president and CEO), Mark D. Millett and Richard P. Teets, Jr.
What it did: Electric-arc-furnace steelmaking from scrap — thin-slab cast flat-rolled steel first, then structural shapes, rail, and steel fabrication and recycling.
Course: The Butler, Indiana minimill — $275 million, built in fourteen months from fall 1994 — began commercial operation in January 1996, and the company went public the same year (Nasdaq: STLD). A structural and rail mill followed in Columbia City. In October 2007 Steel Dynamics acquired Fort Wayne's OmniSource Corporation for about $1.1 billion, joining the city's steelmaker to its scrap supplier. Busse stepped down as CEO at the end of 2011; Millett succeeded him on 1 January 2012.
Fate: Still headquartered in Fort Wayne — one of the largest steel producers in the United States, and the anchor of the city's modern metals economy.
Sources:
- Steel Dynamics, Inc., company profile and history, Reference for Business — the 1993 founding and founders; the $370 million raised by September 1993; the Butler plant, fall 1994–January 1996, $275 million.
- Steel Dynamics, Form 10-K (2003) — incorporated August 1993 in Indiana; Fort Wayne principal offices.
- The Post & Mail, "Millett to succeed Busse as Steel Dynamics CEO" — the founders' Nucor background; the $400 million financing figure (conflicting with the $370 million account); the 2007 OmniSource acquisition; the 2012 succession.