Braidy Industries to shift its aluminium rolling mill location to EastPark

On Tuesday October 18, Braidy Industries announced that the location for its $1.3 billion aluminium rolling mill would shift from South Shore to the EastPark industrial site in Greenup and Boyd counties.

As said by Braidy officials, this decision was based on an analysis of the South Shore property, which revealed that it could not accommodate the deep foundations necessary to support Braidy's mill. 

EastPark industrial site 

"In our diligent efforts, we discovered a risk that our peculiar needs for deep foundations for the mill could not be met without incurring material delays to our planned groundbreaking in the second quarter of 2018," said Braidy Industries Executive Vice President of Engineering, Alan Blankshain.

"Our site will ultimately have to sustain the type of deep-bore foundations necessary to support massive equipment and the processes required to manufacturer high quality automotive and aerospace aluminium," He added.

Braidy currently is looking at purchasing land on Site B in the EastPark Industrial Center. Site B contains 621 acres of land while the design for the South Shore plant was supposed to cover about 380 acres, including more than 50 acres under roof.

The company sticks to it original plan of producing 300,000 tonnes of aluminium per year during phase one and additional 200,000 tonnes in Phase two and expects to break ground on the mill in 2018 and open it in 2020.  Company feels the EastPark is more than adequate enough to execute their plans

Braidy Executive Vice President of Operations Blaine Holt said the closer proximity of the Technology Drive campus of the Ashland Community & Technical College, which is developing a plan for a two-year associates degree in partnership with Braidy, was also a key factor that influenced the relocating plan.

The company is still in negotiations to buy land on EastPark property, which is connected to a port on the Ohio River in Wurtland and is also in close proximity with Railways.

Braidy Industries Chairman and CEO Craig T. Bouchard said the company "will accept no risk of a slowdown to our ground-breaking process. The Braidy mill project is key to regional economic development and a dramatic improvement of the labour participation rate in the five county area.”

Ashland Alliance President and CEO Tim Gibbs said EastPark was made to spur economic development in the area and Braidy’s decision to build its mill there matches with the purpose.

Braidy received a $15 million investment from the state of Kentucky as an incentive to start the plant on a promise to hire 550 workers.