ArcelorMittal Calvert Non-Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel Plant

The United States buys almost all of its non-grain-oriented electrical steel from somewhere else. That is the gap ArcelorMittal is building a $1.2 billion plant in Mobile County to close, on the same Calvert campus where its new electric arc furnace poured its first slabs last year.

Project Scope

The line is sized for up to 150,000 metric tons a year of non-grain-oriented electrical steel, the grade that goes into EV traction motors, generators and grid transformers. Construction started in the second half of 2025 and production is targeted for 2027. Peak construction employment runs to about 1,300, with more than 200 permanent operating positions once the line is running. ArcelorMittal announced the project in February 2025 alongside Alabama Governor Kay Ivey and now owns the Calvert complex outright after buying out Nippon Steel’s stake.

The siting logic is the whole story. Calvert’s 1.5 million tonne-per-year EAF began producing in June 2025 and is ramping to full rate through mid-2026, making it the first North American electric arc furnace able to supply exposed automotive grades from domestically melted and poured steel. The wider complex can roll and finish roughly 5.3 million tons a year. Putting the electrical steel line beside that furnace means the substrate never leaves the site.

Why It Matters

Electrical steel is a bottleneck nobody outside the industry noticed until transformer lead times went from months to years. Grid operators and EV builders are both drawing on the same narrow global supply, and adding 150,000 tonnes of domestic NOES capacity is a supply-chain event as much as a construction one.

For builders, the interesting part is the brownfield sequencing. Erecting a new process line inside a live integrated complex, while the adjacent EAF is still ramping, means the constraint is not steel erection but rather crane access, laydown and utility tie-ins around ongoing production. No general contractor has been publicly named, and neither the delivery method nor any sustainability certification has been published.

Project Team & Details