Saving US pig iron: NEMO Industries CEO Daniel Liss talks bringing back domestic production

Liss’ grandfather was an inspiration. He served in the US Navy as the youngest captain in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

With that in mind, he told SMU, “I’ve always believed entrepreneurs and innovators can do amazing things when called to do it by the times.”

Another maritime adventure led him down his current path. He was invited to participate in a war game exercise at the National War College in Washington, D.C., in 2023. They roleplayed what would happen if China invaded Taiwan.

“My big conclusion from that exercise is we don’t have the shipbuilding capacity to build the ships that we need,” Liss said. “And even if we did, we don’t have the steel and the pig iron to make what we would need in that instance.”

Liss, who has a background in technology, contacted longtime friend and investor Vivek Ramaswamy (also a former presidential candidate) and assembled a team.

Liss told him, “It’s a huge national security issue.”

He continued: “It’s incredibly valuable when you think about re-industrializing the country and bringing amazing quality paying jobs back into communities that have lost them over the last century since the war.”

Liss also got in touch with Mike DuBose, a veteran LNG executive, who became the company’s co-founder.

Why natural gas? Liss described low-cost LNG as one of the macro-advantages of the United States, that iron refining is really a “proxy of natural gas pricing.”

And the team decided to scour the US Gulf Coast to find a great site for the project, eventually settling on Ascension Parish, La.

Pig iron: Connecting the dots

“Everyone in the business we’ve met agrees we need pig iron in the United States of America, because we can do it at cost-parity,” Liss explained. “When you think about what we can accomplish in this country, the math works.”

The sums really start to add up “when you add the tariffs and the uncertainty that’s in our current environment.” Of course, that includes the geopolitical risk the industry has experienced recently.”

This, he said, made it clear we need a “domestic, stable supply.”

To Liss, the project’s economics simply make sense.

“Pig iron pricing ultimately tracks natural gas costs. For every dollar natural gas moves, your iron costs shift about $11 per ton,” Liss said. And in the US, “we’re a low-cost producer competing with the Middle East on LNG.”

He mentioned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent pig iron prices spiking in 2022. Additionally, the recent tariff tussle over Brazilian pig iron. That ended in a last-minute tariff exemption this summer.

Business model, not tariffs

Obviously, since “Liberation Day,” the US steel industry has been preoccupied with tariffs. But Liss told SMU that NEMO Industries has a much wider view than current trade policy.

“The tariffs and reshoring talk are important, but the bigger story is that cheap American gas can make us globally competitive again,” he said. “We can be at cost parity or better than imports – without subsidies.”

Breaking down the project, phase one is a $3-billion investment. Liss said in Louisiana, “We have 1,000 acres, so we have enough room at our iron works for three phases of 2.3 million (metric) tons. And each phase would have a DRP (direct reduction plant) and an electric smelting furnace. And we’re very close to selecting two OEMs for those over the next couple months.”

Construction is expected to start in 2027, with phase one anticipated to take around three years. Liss noted the permitting process has already begun. So far, it’s been going smoothly.

While other projects, especially in Europe, have longer-term targets and government collaboration, Liss said NEMO Industries is meant to be profitable from day one.

“We’re not depending on government handouts,” he said. “The model works now based on economics – not future hydrogen pricing or hypothetical carbon premiums.”

Driven by AI

As part of that model, AI will be woven into the DNA of the Louisiana project.

“I don’t want to sound too grandiose,” Liss said. “But I do think it is going to be something you haven’t seen before.

He noted they are purchasing the technology from best-in-class OEMs, “so we’re not trying to take first-of-a-kind technology risk.”

Liss quipped that traditionally:

“The sex, drugs, and rock and roll of this business is the melt shop. Careers are made in melt shops.”

To that end, he said, “We are investigating who has the best DRP, who has the best melting furnace in the world.”

But at NEMO, they are pushing beyond that image. “And our technology layer is going to be built on top of that,” Liss added.

That is, the team plans to layer a sophisticated AI system atop proven equipment from the world’s best OEMs.

In a typical facility, operators need to sit in a control room and monitor countless variables, including temperature, gas flow, chemical composition, and more. If that task were outsourced to sensors and AI in a data feedback loop, constantly modeling new information, just imagine the predictive power you could have over an operation?

Liss calls it “an incredibly complex optimization puzzle,” and having AI on your side can help you solve it.

Just the start

As for what product specifically NEMO will produce, Liss said they are going to start with granulated pig iron (GPI), “and see what the market tells us.”

Looking for customers, he said the team had “a very successful trip to visit with the top Japanese traders a couple weeks ago.”

“And there’s a lot of interest from mining companies in Brazil and Canada, maybe even Australia, about potentially using this facility as an ability to go into the midstream,” he added.

Their model, Liss suggested, could even serve as a template for other companies in the future.

And with backers like industry heavyweight Cargill Metals, they’ve got a lot of momentum – and funding – behind them.

Liss ended on a note of gratitude regarding NEMO’s current path.

“For most, it’s just one part of a much larger operation, something that often gets overlooked or isn’t front and center,” he said.

“But for us, that’s exactly where the excitement lies. It’s where we see an opportunity to contribute not only to strengthening American industry, but also to elevating the global industry as a whole.”