66a1053ff929e458e4847ac8 Ritz Transformers 1

Cleveland-Cliffs, German Firm Commit to Transformers Projects in West Virginia, Georgia

July 24, 2024

The companies’ projects are expected to create more than 700 jobs combined.

Two companies have announced investment plans to help ease shortage of electrical transformers in the United States.

Steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. said July 22 it will invest $100 million—with the state of West Virginia chipping in another $50 million in the form of a forgivable loan—to covert a section of its idled Weirton plant on the Ohio River. Cliffs’ goal is to have the new plant up and running in the first half of 2026, when it will return jobs to 600 employees sidelined by the idling of the tinplate mill. (For more on this story from our fellow Endeavor brand T&D World, click here.)

Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said in February the company would indefinitely idle the Weirton plant in April after the International Trade Commission rejected U.S. Department of Commerce antidumping and countervailing tariffs on various tin and chromium coated sheet steel products from four countries. Since then, Goncalves and his team have been working with union and government leaders to repurpose the plant.

Speaking to an event in Weirton on July 22, Goncalves said the property “offers significant growth opportunity, with the needed infrastructure in place and a world-class, highly-trained workforce ready to be deployed.” The 600-job plan will return two-thirds of the jobs lost in April.

Separately this week, leaders of Ritz Instrument Transformers said they will invest $28 million to build a plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, south of Augusta. Germany-based Ritz plans to employ 130 people there to make high-voltage instrument transformers there, with a production start eyed for late 2025.

Ritz, which is home to about 1,300 workers around the world, already runs a 14-year-old plant in Lavonia, about 130 miles north of Waynesboro, that supplies transformers to both utilities and original equipment manufacturers. The company also has set up a temporary facility, home to 30 workers, near its planned Waynesboro site.

“The investment in a new state-of-the-art factory […] in Waynesboro marks the single-largest investment to date for the Ritz Group,” Ritz USA CEO and General Manager Scott Flowers said in a statement. “The U.S. electrical grid is undergoing rapid expansion and transformation as the utility industry reacts to and prepares for growth driven by adoption of electric vehicles, new datacenters needed to power AI, continued addition of renewable generation, and an increase in the U.S. manufacturing base.”

About the Author

Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor

A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has been in business journalism since the mid-1990s and writes about public companies, markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications, focusing on IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal, T&D World and Healthcare Innovation. He also curates the twice-monthly Market Moves Strategy newsletter that showcases Endeavor stories on strategy, leadership and investment and contributes to other Market Moves newsletters.

With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati in 1997, initially covering retail and the courts before shifting to banking, insurance and investing. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal before being named editor of the Nashville Post in early 2008. He led a team that helped grow the Post's online traffic more than fivefold before joining Endeavor in September 2021.