BRANDENBURG — Nucor Corp., the nation's largest steel producer, will invest $1.35 billion to build a new sheet mill along the Ohio River in Meade County, creating 400 jobs over 15 years.

The investment, announced by the company Wednesday in Brandenburg, is a huge coup for Kentucky and adds to the state's growing steel and aluminum manufacturing sector.

The 1.5 million-square-foot facility will be built along a swath of bottom land where a grain shipping port is now located.

Jobs created by the project will pay an average of $72,000 annually, Nucor CEO John Ferriola said Wednesday afternoon, during an announcement at Meade County College and Career Center.

Brandenburg Mayor Ronnie Joyner appeared at a loss for words after plans for the plant, due to open by 2022, were unveiled before a crowd of Nucor executives, elected officials, local residents and school staff.

"It's the biggest thing that's happened here since the chemical plant opened in the early 1950s," said Joyner, who worked 39 years at what's now Monument Chemical.

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Gov. Matt Bevin and Nucor's Ferriola took the opportunity to praise President Donald Trump for imposing steel tariffs on China, which they said have helped boost U.S. manufacturing and given incentives for industries to create new factories like the one planned for Meade County.

As the two men spoke to the media after a 30-minute ceremony, Trump called Bevin and congratulated him and Ferriola for a big win for the state and for U.S. jobs. At one point, Bevin lowered his cellphone and hit the speaker switch so reporters could listen to the president's remarks. But they were mostly drowned out by the noise of an excited crowd.

Nucor's investment ranks as one of the five biggest in the state's history and the largest west of Interstate 65, Bevin said.

Nucor, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, already has a sheet steel mill upriver from Louisville in Gallatin County. Last year, the company said it would put $650 million into that plant to nearly double production capacity to 3 million tons annually.

About an hour before the announcement, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority voted to offer about $40 million in state incentives to the company. It will provide $30 million in incentives through the Kentucky Business Investment program, which offers performance-based income tax credits and wage assessments to companies.

In addition, it is offering $10 million in incentives through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act, which provides refunds of state sales and use taxes that companies pay for certain building and construction materials.

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"There was a lot of competition for this project," Ferriola said. "Several states were competing for this."

The CEO said the company was impressed with Kentucky's business-friendly approach, but also with the folks the team met in Brandenburg leading up to the company's decision.

"A town like Brandenburg is America at its finest," he said.

Many people in the county of 28,700 residents work in skilled trades and have to leave the county for jobs in Louisville, Elizabethtown and Owensboro every day. It'll be nice to have some of those jobs back home in Meade, said welding instructor Ben Bowen.

The mill ultimately "will have a positive impact on the whole community," he said.

Nucor ranks as the nation's biggest "mini-mill" steelmaker, which uses electric arc furnaces to melt scrap steel, not the more traditional blast furnaces to melt iron. Its plants in several states turn out steel bars, beams, flat-rolled steel, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, mesh, fasteners and metal building systems.

The company reported $1.9 billion in operating income on $20 billion in revenues in 2017.

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Meade's largest industry is Monument Chemical, a solvent manufacturer with about 270 employees. The business has access to rail lines and the river and is just upriver from a grain shipping port operated by Consolidated Grain and Barge Co.

Meade officials said the shipping port will need to be moved in order to make space and provide river access needed by the mill. They are still in discussions with CGB on how that will unfold, Ferriola said in a brief interview after the ceremony.

"We see no big stumbling blocks," added David Pace, chairman of the

Meade County-Brandenburg Industrial Development Authority.

The authority last year began marketing the new Buttermilk Falls industrial park beside the river, but got few bites, Pace said.

"We're glad nobody came" because now all the property and more will go to the mill, he said.

Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @morganwatkins26. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/morganw.

Grace Schneider: 502-582-4082; gschneider@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @gesinfk. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/graces