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Keith Busse's penchant for Corvettes gave way to Porsches a few years ago. And now the man who built the world's first thin-slab steel-casting mini-mill in Crawfordsville for Nucor Corp. has traded up to his own plant.
Steel Dynamics Inc. has been on the fast track since its September 1993 founding by Busse and two other former Nucor principals. It plans to coil the first roll of ultrathin steel by Thanksgiving at a half-billion-dollar plant northeast of Fort Wayne. When plans for the mini-mill and its up to 600 jobs were announced in early 1994, the deal was hailed by Site Selection magazine as one of the year's top 10 developments worldwide. It was Indiana's biggest win since United Airlines chose Indianapolis for a maintenance hub in 1991.
Busse, 52, is a Fort Wayne native. A graduate of the city's St. Francis College with a master's degree in business from Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, Busse has moved back to the city with his wife and son after traveling with Nucor.
Busse's physical nature suggests the swagger of an Old West law enforcer, something author Richard Preston picked up in his book American Steel, which focused on the Crawfordsville project. "It is possible that Busse was a marshal wearing a steel star, sitting in a saloon drinking whiskey, and pretty soon he and his boys were going to clean up the American steel industry." Still, Busse employs an "aw-shucks" demeanor that belies his sharp business acumen and desire to compete.
Since the Crawfordsville plant proved the process in 1989, thin-slab mini-mills are hotter than July 4th fireworks. In mini-mills, electric-arc furnaces that draw enough energy to light a small city are used to melt scrap metal. The molten stew is rectified with carbon or other elements, then poured into a three-story continuous caster that emits a strip of steel 2 inches thick. That strand is fed hot into six rolling stands until it becomes as thin as 0.04 inch thick, 5 feet wide and a mile long. Finally a coiler rolls the steel into 20-ton bundles that later will become appliances, machines or possibly car parts.
Right now more than 600 workers are pouring foundations, erecting buildings and laying railroad track at a frantic...