Shreveport gets $200 million steel production plant

Shreveport gets $200 million steel production plant    Steelscape, a subsidiary of Grupo IMSA in Mexico, will invest $200 million to build a 200,000-square-foot facility in the Louisiana port of Shreveport-Bossier to produce metallic-coated and pre-painted steel coils for construction markets in the United States and Canada.
   Grupo IMSA’s plant in Shreveport will produce about 500,000 tons of finished product a year when complete. The company will build the production facility in four stages on a 78-acre site. The first stage of production is expected to be operational by the second quarter of 2006.
   According to a study by Louisiana State University, the Steelscape project will use 300 barge shipments a year, doubling the record amount of traffic in 2004 at Shreveport. In addition, the university estimates that truck traffic at the port will increase by 16,000 trucks a year to a total of 40,000 trucks a year. Steelscape is also expected to use 7,000 railcars a year.