Steel Product Producers

Fabricator Merrill Steel building $32M+ facility in Arkansas

Written by Ethan Bernard

August 22, 2025

Steel fabricator Merrill Steel will invest over $32 million to construct a manufacturing facility Osceola, Ark.

The operation will create 108 new jobs over three years.

“The addition of the Osceola facility will perfectly complement our existing facilities, providing a high volume of quality fabricated and coated structural steel to our well-established client base,” Merrill Steel President Fred Schwalbach said in a statement. 

Hiring for a range of positions in Osceola at the facility, the company’s first in Arkansas, is expected to begin in spring 2026.

Clint O’Neal, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, lauded the move.

“With this new investment, the steel industry in Mississippi County stands to grow even bigger,” he said. “The leadership in Osceola and Mississippi County has had a far-reaching vision for making this region a steel-producing hub, and this investment is the result of this vision.”

Note that Osceola is also the location of U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel operations, which have an annual raw steel capacity of ~3.3 million short tons (st).

Schofield, Wis.-based Merrill is a supplier of complex structural steel and heavy plate fabrication.

Ethan Bernard

Ethan Bernard is managing editor for Steel Market Update. He previously worked for American Metal Market as a copy editor in the New York office for two years, starting in 2008. Later, he copy edited AMM’s monthly magazine on a freelance basis from 2015 until 2017. With experience in financial copywriting and textbook publishing, he holds a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, and an MFA. in Creative Writing from New York University. He can be reached at ethan@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7871.

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