Growing Kentucky’s Leading Role in Metals

State forms MI2 to expand a $34 billion industry at the center of supply chains


Kentucky is a major steel and aluminum production center, but few state residents know it.

Today, the majority of U.S. aluminum production capacity is in Kentucky. Kentuckians operate North America’s largest stainless-steel mill and the largest copper recycler, run the largest aluminum recycling plant in the world, manage three of the five aluminum smelters in the U.S., and roll sheet aluminum for most of the nation’s beverage cans.

The prominent role metals play in the state economy “has long been one of the best-kept secrets about Kentucky,” according to one of the men leading a public-private effort to change perceptions.

Jobs pay better than average in the commonwealth’s $34.2 billion metals sector. Nucor, a Charlotte, N.C.-based steel maker and recycler with 1,850 Kentucky jobs in 24 locations, reports its median pay nationally tops $125,000 at its 300 facilities nationally — without including executives.

Primary and fabricated metal products exported from Kentucky in 2022 topped $2 billion.

Kentucky is where players in the evolving global metals industry are choosing to pour billions of dollars in capital investment and have created tens of thousands of jobs over the past few decades to the present. Additional dollars and jobs that could have a further heavy impact are being considered as the global industry goes through a historic modernization.

Century Aluminum wants to build the biggest smelter in U.S. history in Kentucky, a multibillion-dollar plant with 1,000-plus jobs. Doing so, however, will require locking down a supply of energy that does not now exist.

More than 250 metals-related businesses and facilities operate in Kentucky and employ over 36,000 people. In the five years of Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration, there have been 106 metals-related project announcements that are creating nearly 4,000 full-time jobs behind over $3 billion in new investments.

To harden this growing sector, the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development in 2022 created a new industry collaboration organization, the Metals Innovation Initiative. The purpose of MI2 is to connect all parties to work for the common good in areas such as adequate energy and transportation infrastructure, supportive public policy, and more and better skilled workers.

MI2 aims to improve the state’s competitive position by addressing key issues like ensuring young Kentuckians and educators know the well-paying metals sector exists as well as being able to satisfy growing energy demand in a world market that increasingly wants renewable power.

No one else in the country or the rest of the world has such a local effort. The Steel Manufacturers Association and The Aluminum Institute represent national private-sector interests, but no other state or region is trying to assemble collaborative links regionally in the manner as MI2.

In creating MI2, Gov. Andy Beshear said Kentucky is applying lessons learned from its healthcare sector in Louisville, where major players decided in the past decade to set aside competitive instincts to address a shortage of workers.

The commonwealth doesn’t mine metals ore. It mills metal much more than it refines it, but Kentucky’s central location in the U.S. manufacturing belt has helped it specialize in filling key links in quite a few strategic supply chains. Vast amounts of steel and aluminum go into vehicles, appliances, construction, electronics, fencing, cable, the massive bases of wind turbines, even deodorant.

MI2 officials see the potential to make metals much bigger.

A prestigious invitation to speak in January at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Switzerland gave Beshear the opportunity to tout Kentucky’s current run of financial success while also providing the chance away from the podium to talk with CEOs who have operations in the state. Every business he met with that has operations in Kentucky told the governor they had one of their best years on record last fiscal year.

“That means that we are producing; it means that we are helping our companies to be profitable, which means they expand,” Beshear said. “I made that pitch to every single one of those business owners, because these were the international CEOs that are so hard to get to. I got to be face-to-face with and got to say to them, ‘If this was one of your best years and we were one of your best facilities, if you expand that facility you’re going to have an even better year.’”

Kentucky is well known among the some of the Switzerland event crowd because it has long had trade offices in Hamburg, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan. The commonwealth ranks in the top five nationally in the percentage of workers employed by international companies. Metals plants are operated by manufacturers based in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

“This has long been the best-kept secret about Kentucky: Most people haven’t traditionally known us as a leader in the metals industry. We are seeing that begin to change now,” said Vijay Kamineni, who became MI2’s first CEO after originating the organization’s concept about five years ago in a white paper along with Sam Ford, who is now chief partnership officer.

Kamineni was recently succeeded as CEO by Mike Buckentin, who retired in the past year from Logan Aluminum, the state’s largest aluminum products maker. No one keeps track specifically but Logan might be the largest beverage can sheet producer in the world. It is a joint venture of Novelis and Tri-Arrows Aluminum that operates in Russellville, where the company produces more than 2 billion pounds of aluminum annually.

The elements of MI2’s creation emerged after Kentucky in 2018 became the first state to participate in an effort started by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to accelerate innovation regionally around the world. MIT led a two-year process whose state partners included the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, the University of Kentucky, other higher education players, private investors and startups, and larger entities such as Logan Aluminum. After the initial MIT collaboration wrapped up, the cabinet formed a nonprofit called Accelerate Kentucky to push innovation and “to create things that did not then exist.”

MI2 is housed at Western Kentucky University in its specially created Innovation Campus. Productively connecting the metals industry and the commonwealth’s postsecondary education players is a key initial strategy.

“Logan has always had a really good relationship with WKU,” said Buckentin, who spent seven years running the 1,400-employee link in the nation’s aluminum supply-chain and oversaw nearly $1 billion in upgrades. “By far we hire more students out of WKU than any other college in the state or the United States. We have lots of scholarships there. We have a partnership in their engineering department where we do a lot of work with students, and we’re involved throughout the year.”

Forming additional strong collaboration ties with other university engineering departments in Kentucky is one of Buckentin’s missions. All eight public universities in the state have engineering departments and programs.

MI2 and the postsecondary partners are looking for areas of research that academics can obtain grants or other funding to study and solve metals operation issues.

It takes time to educate the academics and universities about the extent of current Kentucky operations and practical needs of metals the sector. Much of MI2’s early work has been “a whole lot speaking with the university presidents and improving the understanding of the needs and how to help,” Buckentin said.

Information sharing with leaders and members of the Kentucky General Assembly is also on his agenda.

Producing a robust pipeline of metals workforce in the state is the end goal behind the strategy of communication with the education and public policy communities.

“Where do we get the people we need, and are they going to be qualified?” Buckentin said, “We have a lot of work to do there.”

He envisions it as a holistic effort that will create a K-12 presence and awareness about the industry.

“Bowling Green (Chamber of Commerce) is doing some pretty good work in this area” of jobs awareness outreach K-12, he said, adding that the Kentucky Community and Technical College System is also an important player.  “The third element I would talk about is to get private industry more involved in the school system to attract and retain qualified students.”

Kentucky expects the success it has had landing metals projects and jobs to continue, Beshear said. Site-selection decisions typically take years, but the state has won the competition for more than 100 announced deals in metals categories in Beshear’s time in office, and companies have many more in their consideration pipeline.

“It’s moving forward at a pretty fast rate, and what I think that says is, the market is primed,” Beshear told The Lane Report. “Now there’s a lot of uncertainty at the federal level that is causing impacts in every industry across the United States, but this is an industry that is set to weather that uncertainty better than most. I think you will continue to see projects announced and move forward in the metals sector even when they might be pausing in other sectors.”

Steel and aluminum made outside the U.S. is being very intentionally targeted for tariffs by President Donald Trump’s administration with the goal being to revive domestic production, for national security as well as economic growth. Century Aluminum issued a statement in March strongly supporting higher tariffs on foreign metals.

There is opportunity in the present to win primary metals projects because the aluminum industry especially — but other metals categories too — is only part way through a major shift in its largest scale operations, which must adapt to massive changes in the energy sector. Primary metals operations that smelt, recycle and mill are big energy users, and most U.S. aluminum mills have closed in the past 20-plus years because they relied on energy-intensive technology powered by fossil fuels that are becoming more expensive than solar, wind and hydro.

Of the more than 20 U.S. smelters around in the early 2000s, only five still operate and at production levels far below their capacity. Three are in Kentucky, a fourth is just across the Ohio River in southern Indiana and the fifth is just southwest of the commonwealth.

Usable aluminum is extracted from crushed bauxite ore in a two-step process that requires massive electric current to separate pure element from molten alumina created when the ore undergoes a high-heat chemical reaction. Metal smelting and processing is key demand component for power grids and generators.


The proposed Century Aluminum Kentucky plant would be the first new U.S. smelter in 45 years and would revive a vital national industry that has been closing outdated, inefficient and energy-intensive aluminum operations since the 1980s. Formerly the world’s top producer country, the U.S. now smelts only around 2% of new metal into a global market where demand is surging.

Aluminum is recycled at high rates since this is easier and cheaper than smelting bauxite, but world demand is growing 5-7% annually, according to the International Aluminum Institute. Vehicle makers want more of it to “lightweight” cars, trucks and aircraft. Canned beverages keep growing in popularity. And population urbanization all over the world requires electric and other new infrastructure that increasingly is built with aluminum.

Electricity is aluminum production’s highest cost-of-goods factor and the marketplace today demands that in addition to being plentiful and affordable, it should have low or no impact on global warming. Canada has 10 smelters located near its plentiful hydro power. Nuclear power options are increasingly considered necessary to meet the expected demand required by facilities like Century’s new plant.

Kentucky’s Public Service Commission is studying whether and how state government might end its ban on nuclear power production and then regulate it. The PSC is due to report back to the General Assembly in December.

“The power needs of this country are increasing exponentially. To meet those needs and to do it in a way that will meet the demands of the companies that are locating projects, small scale or the small nuclear reactors are something we’re going to have to look at very, very closely if we want to be competitive with other states,” Beshear said.

“What you’re going to start seeing is more and more efforts to bring in nuclear through what’s called small nuclear reactors,” Buckentin said. “Logan was fed by TVA and I was in many, many meetings with them throughout my time at Logan. They have a good plan. They are doing the right types of things to learn about that and come up with their plan to convert over the next 20-30 years most all of their coal over to nuclear.”


By Mark Green via Lane Report