Work on California's first steel mill in California in five decades is on schedule and progressing as planned. Crews are excavating the Mojave Micro Mill's deep foundations and will be pouring concrete for the first foundation in mid-July.

Connections for construction water in the desert setting have been completed, and work is ongoing on fencing, temporary power and site grading.

Since its 2014 inception, Pacific Steel Group (PSG) served as a leading reinforcing steel fabrication and placement company in the western U.S. Then in 2019, the last rebar producer in California closed, leaving Pacific Steel little choice but to buy and transport steel from out-of-state producers.

That's when the group made the decision to fill the gap in the market on their own.

In March 2025, PSG broke ground on the Mojave Micro Mill, the first steel mill to be built in California in the last five decades and California's first zero-process carbon emissions rebar mill.

Pacific Steel Group photo

Danieli Corp. is the main contractor, Hatch Engineering will oversee site management and procurement, Largo is the concrete subcontractor and PSG will provide and install the fabricated rebar.

Once operating, the mill is expected to provide permanent employment for about 400 employees.

The $630 million project will employ about 515 construction workers on average, peaking at about 600 over a two-year period, said Mark Olson, vice-president of mill operations.

"We looked at an opportunity to vertically integrate our business and produce our own reinforcing steel for our own customers that we would then fabricate and install in construction projects throughout primarily a range of 400 miles," Olson said. "That was really the genesis of this project."

"Pacific Steel Group's investment in Kern County is more than just the construction of a steel mill — it's a transformational step forward for our local economy and workforce," said supervisor Chris Parlier at the groundbreaking. "The Mojave Micro Mill represents the future of American manufacturing, producing seismic-grade, green rebar right here in Kern County."

Among the biggest challenges so far has been winning approval for the project in the Mojave Desert under The California Quality Act (CEQA), Olson said.

"The regulatory process was daunting. We knew that it would be, and it should be. So, I'd say when we achieved approval last March, we achieved a major milestone. It took us from the time we signed the contract for our steel mill provider until we received CEQA approval 23 months later. And anybody that knows anything about CEQA in California knows that quite an accomplishment."

The Mojave Micro Mill is being billed as "one of the cleanest mills in the world," spanning 174 acres, with approximately 63 dedicated to on-site renewable energy. PSG has designed the facility to establish new industry standards for emissions reduction by incorporating a carbon capture system, secondary high-efficiency filtration, and NOx emissions mitigation.

"We knew that if we were going to bring steel making back to California, that we were going to have to ensure that we had state-of-the-art technology innovation," Olson said. "This will be the first EAF (Electric Arc Furnace) steel production that does not use natural gas.

Since the facility would not be using natural gas, PSG did not bring in a natural gas line to the site. The group reasoned it would be costly if it became necessary in the coming years to retrofit natural gas out of the process, or to introduce new emission control technologies that hadn't been tried before.

"We thought it would be wise and more cost effective to design and build this upfront," Olson said. "We believe that we will set global benchmarks for not just carbon emissions, which seems to be a big focus these days, but also criteria pollutants."

The facility also will have a "robust renewable energy portfolio" supporting the mill, including lithium and non- lithium batteries, he said. "It will produce, out of the gate, about 59 percent of our power needs."

One of the challenges, however, is that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day, making a connection to the electric provider necessary for the times when the facility is not able to take advantage of the sun.

Pacific Steel Group photo

"One of the other reasons we sited at this location in the Mojave Desert is you get the most efficient use of photovoltaic. You have high efficiency, probably the best available in the country, right here in the Mojave," Olson said. "That's going to support us directly into our substation. So, we're going to feed our process directly from the solar and the batteries."

PSG also is introducing pollution control technologies that have never been implemented in EAF steel production. It's not new technology, Olson said.

"But it is new for this process. It has been used in coal-fired power plants and oil and gas refineries and cement plants, but it's never been used in steel before," he said. "So, we partnered with Danieli, who is a steel process expert, to help us implement these technologies and couple them with an EAF gas stream, which has always been the challenge. So, pretty special stuff."

PSG expects the mill to be producing steel by the third quarter of 2027.  CEG