One of the most significant industrial developments on Minot’s horizon begins more than hundreds of miles to our east, with mountainous piles of iron ore that have lain dormant in northeast Minnesota for decades.

North American Iron plans to reclaim that stockpiled ore, transport it directly by rail, and use it to produce merchant pig iron at a new facility in northeast Minot. With full permitting expected before the end of 2026 and financing making progress, the company plans to break ground in 2027 and begin production in late 2029 – creating hundreds of skilled jobs and generating significant economic output each year in the Minot area.

The story of that future industry, however, begins with the history of Minnesota’s Iron Range.

For much of the 20th century, the Hill Annex Mine near Calumet, Minnesota, was one of the nation’s most productive iron mines. It opened in 1913 and, at its peak, ranked as the sixth-largest producer of iron ore in Minnesota. Iron mined from the region supplied the steel that supported American industry and, eventually, the Allied war effort during World War II.

Mining practices changed during the 1950s and ‘60s, and the industry shifted away from the type of ore found at Hill Annex and other mines like it. By the 1970s, iron ore mining there had largely stopped, and Hill Annex shut down in 1978.

What remained were massive stockpiles of legacy iron ore stacked hundreds of feet high and multiple city blocks long, spread across roughly 20 square miles around Calumet. For decades, those piles sat where mining crews had left them – waiting, as it turned out, for a plan that would connect Minnesota’s past to Minot’s future.

That plan would eventually come from Jim Bougalis, who grew up on the Iron Range and spent much of his career around those piles.

“My parents were civil contractors,” Bougalis recalled while standing atop one of the stockpiles near Calumet. “I started at a very early age – 11 years old, I think it was. I purchased the company from my father when I was in my mid-20s. I would use this,” he said, pointing to the ore underfoot. “I would dig into it with the loader, pick it up and build a road with it.”

The size and history of the stockpiles continued to fascinate him.

“I spent the last 25 years or so identifying these piles, categorizing them, backing them up to the original records, finding out that they were actually iron, matching these records,” he said. “These piles were put there for the purpose of someone taking them again. And here we are today.”

Bougalis said the idea for North American Iron began to take shape when federal tariffs and major new investments reshaped the domestic steel industry. Following the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2018, he watched the industry invest nearly $30 billion in new domestic production without a matching increase in the supply of merchant pig iron.

That vulnerability became more apparent in 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted a major source of U.S. pig iron imports.

Pig iron is an essential ingredient for the modern steelmaking process, providing the purity and carbon content required to make high-quality steel. Today, 100 percent of pig iron used domestically is imported, with no U.S. company currently producing it at commercial scale.

“What makes that worse now is that today, we’re buying 75 percent of our iron from Brazil – one country,” Bougalis said. “What happens when something happens in Brazil? We lose 75 percent of our iron.”

That dependence has implications that extend beyond the commercial steel market.

“We can’t build our tanks, we can’t build our missiles, whatever we need for the military – we need the iron resource to build it,” Bougalis said. “Otherwise, we’re asking our adversaries for the steel.”

North American Iron’s model is designed to help close that gap using a resource the country already has. Its sister company, Calumet Reclamation Company, plans to reclaim the legacy stockpiles at Hill Annex in Minnesota and ship the material by rail to Minot for production.

“Most mining operations go in this order: resources, then reclamation,” Bougalis said. “Our operation is backwards. We’re reclaiming the piles, turning mountains into hills – and extracting the resource from them.” The project is expected to eventually free more than 1,000 acres of Minnesota land for other uses once the reclamation work is complete.

With a source of ore identified, North American Iron needed a place to build. Bougalis said the company evaluated sites across the country before narrowing its focus to North Dakota and, ultimately, a 2,400-acre site in northeast Minot.

“We really narrowed it down to North Dakota for two major reasons,” he said. “One is the proximity to the ore. It’s a direct ship by rail from our site in Calumet right to Minot. But the other reason, and the real important one, is the price of energy.”

That advantage traces back to the natural gas produced alongside Bakken oil in western North Dakota. When pipeline capacity or access to markets is limited, some of that associated gas is flared rather than put to productive use. North American Iron has an agreement with WBI Energy, which will build and operate the Minot Industrial Pipeline, a direct 90-mile line from Tioga to Minot with enough capacity to power a separate, off-the-grid power plant for North American Iron’s needs.

In addition to those economic factors, Bougalis said the character of the Magic City aligned with that of his organization.

“It’s a really progressive city, an industrious city, and we feel right at home there,” he said.

The project has received significant support from the state as its plans have advanced. North American Iron was awarded a $7 million grant from the North Dakota Clean Sustainable Energy Authority, and the North Dakota Development Fund made a $3 million equity investment in the project. The company also announced additional financing in July, strength-ening its ability to move the facility toward construction.

The permitting process has also reached an important stage.

“We’re at the point now we’ll be fully permitted for our project this fall in 2026,” Bougalis said. “We hope to break ground in 2027 and be in production by 2029.”

Construction activity is expected to build gradually before peaking during the project’s second year, when the workforce on site is projected to reach between 3,000 and 4,000 people.

Once built, North American Iron projects that the plant will support roughly 650 permanent positions. Bougalis said those jobs will look quite different from the labor-intensive work historically associated with iron production.

“The ironmaking of today is a bit different than what you think about shoveling coal,” he said. “It’s all robotics near the furnaces. These are all higher-end jobs.”

The company is already considering where to find that workforce; for example, Bougalis believes there will be opportunities for service members transitioning out of Minot Air Force Base and graduates of engineering programs across the North Dakota University System.

North American Iron’s approach to manufacturing pig iron differs sharply from the coal-fired blast furnaces many people picture when they hear the words “iron plant.”

“A blast furnace is like a big pot,” Bougalis said. “You pour coal in one side, and you pour iron ore in the other, and you melt it into molten iron, and all the emissions come out of the top of the pot.”

In contrast, the Minot facility is designed around a hydrogen-powered process.

“Our project is more like a microwave oven,” he said. “It’s a closed batch. It uses hydrogen rather than coal as the reductant. And it only heats to 700 degrees, so it doesn't combust.”

The company projects that the hydrogen-based process will reduce carbon emissions by approximately 60 percent compared to a traditional blast furnace. Plans for the facility also include onsite carbon capture and sequestration capabilities.

Water use is designed around Minot’s wastewater system rather than its fresh water supply, utilizing about 4 million gallons of wastewater per day that would otherwise move out of the city’s lagoon system and into the Mouse River. And as for noise: outside of the sound of loading and unloading railcars, the bulk of the production process will occur inside enclosed buildings.

Bougalis emphasized that the technologies behind the project have already been used successfully else-where.

“The hydrogen reactors like we’ll use in Minot have been in production since 1957,” he said. “We’re using the same engineers that have done this over and over again. Nothing here is left up in the air. Everything in our project is using a proven process.”

While the individual processes may be established, bringing them together in Minot is expected to create something entirely new for the region: a large-scale industrial operation connecting Minnesota’s mining history, North Dakota’s energy resources, and the growing national demand for a domestic iron supply.

A preliminary assessment estimates that the completed facility will generate approximately $1.1 billion in annual economic output, supporting new high-quality jobs, increasing demand for local businesses, and diversifying the region’s economy.

“North American Iron is poised to be a generational, transformational project for our community,” said Jarid Lundeen, 2026 Board Chair of the Minot Area Chamber EDC. “We’re thrilled that their team recognized Minot’s potential when they were considering where to build their pig iron manufacturing facility. Our location, our energy capacity, and our people make us special, and we’re eager to see this project take shape in the coming years.”
 

Have more questions about North American Iron? Click here to read and download a frequently asked questions (FAQ) sheet, and feel free to reach out to Economic Development Specialist Mark Lyman at mark@minotchamberedc.com.