Snipe hunting in Osceola

I was on the Delta yesterday visiting some farmers when one of them asked if I knew about the new e-cycling facility being built in Osceola. I follow that little city and hadn’t heard a word so I drove up there. Nothing to see but plenty to hear.

Apparently they have landed Blue Oak Resources, a California company that salvages metals from discarded electronics. City and county officials are tightlipped, only acknowledging that they are in talks with “someone.” Talks that are echoing in every coffee shop and on every farm in Mississippi County where people follow news about jobs like they do high school sports.

There’s more. Blue Oak is run by John Correnti, the mercurial steel man who is also behind the proposed Big River Steel plant to be built in Osceola. He is loved and hated on the Delta. Correnti had a nasty divorce from Nucor Steel in Blytheville, AR, when he was invited to leave the company. His management style was too intuitive, maverick and decentralized. He had no use for middle management and little use for strategic planning. He relied on the creative thoughts of people doing the work to help shape the company.

Under Correnti’s leadership, Nucor had experienced explosive growth. Even so Correnti’s boss and mentor F. Kenneth Iverson, was was ousted by a vote of the board. According to the new chairman, H. David Aycock, the company had outgrown Correnti’s management style. There are also hard feelings among some Blythevillians that Correnti shafted the city when he started a new steel mill in Mississippi. He insists it was just a better business deal and still has an address in Blytheville.

Correnti’s plan for Big River is to float scrap metal down the Mississippi River to his new plant. Which is right next door to the Plum Point coal plant, which will supply vast amounts of needed electricity at a good price. Plum Point is just right down the road from steel fabricator Beckman Volmer. Which is right down the street from the site of the proposed Indigo Oil terminal, which will have great demand for steel pipe and other fabricated metal products.

Now Correnti appears to be leveraging the supply chain. He’ll likely float used electronics down the river to Osceola and unload them just like he will scrap metal. The new, yet to be confirmed, e-cycling plant will reclaim any valuable metals. Location? Across the street from Beckman Volmer the metal fabricator.

When pressed for comment on the new plant, the progress of Big River Steel and the Indigo Oil terminal, Clif Chitwood, the head of economic development for Mississippi County, would only say, “We’ve got a lot of balls in the air. I just wish a few would drop through the net. “