The global steel market, worth an estimated $1.47 trillion in 2024, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6% between 2025 and 2030. This growth is attributable to various factors, including urbanization, population growth, advances in the automotive and aerospace industries, and the rapid expansion of the renewable energy sector. After all, steel is essential in everything from washing machines and surgical scalpels to airplanes and skyscrapers, making it the most commonly used metal on the planet.
Steel manufacturers, however, are affected by a wide range of global issues, from supply chain disruptions and fluctuating customer demand to global politics and shifting labor trends.
Steelmakers also face enormous pressure to modernize production and ensure sustainability for the future. McKinsey estimates that global demand for low-carbon steel will grow tenfold over the next decade. As it stands, steel production accounts for 2.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, amounting to 7% of the global total.
The U.S. currently accounts for around 5% of the global steel market. Here’s a rundown of some of the nation’s most prominent players. How are they driving innovation, and — most importantly — what steps are they taking to manufacture high-quality and sustainable steel products?
Nucor
Revenue: $30.73 billion (2024)
Employees: 32,000
Headquarters: Charlotte, North Carolina
Founded: 1955
Nucor is North America’s largest steel manufacturer and recycler, with facilities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Its products include carbon and alloy steel, steel racking, steel piling, steel joists, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold-finished steel, precision castings, steel fasteners, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, overhead doors, steel grating, wire and wire mesh, and utility structures.
As the first industrial company to join the UN 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact and one of North America’s first diversified steel makers with net zero, science-based greenhouse gas targets for 2050, Nucor is leading the charge in creating a more sustainable, carbon-free steel industry.
In 2023, the manufacturer launched its “Made for Good” campaign, highlighting its long-term commitment to producing steel using the cleanest commercially available methods. This includes the company’s pioneering circular, recycling-based manufacturing process, which has an emissions intensity as much as three times lower than extractive steel-making methods.
Steel Dynamics
Revenue: $17.5 billion (2024)
Employees: 13,000
Headquarters: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Founded: 1993
Steel Dynamics is one of the U.S.’s biggest and most diversified domestic steel producers and metals recyclers, with facilities throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Its products include flat roll steel, long products steel, steel joists and decks, and processed copper. In addition, the manufacturer’s metals recycling operations involve the purchase, processing, and resale of ferrous and nonferrous scrap metals into reusable forms and grades. Steel Dynamics also offers transportation, marketing, brokerage, and scrap management services.
The company takes pride in its intentionally sustainable business methods. For example, its circular manufacturing model leverages electric arc furnace technology (EAF) to produce lower-carbon-emission steel, using its recycled ferrous scrap as the primary input. Further, companywide performance-based incentive programs encourage the workforce to reduce raw material usage, reuse secondary materials, and promote material conservation and recycling.
In alignment with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5° C scenario, Steel Dynamics set a 2050 emissions intensity target and an interim 2030 emissions intensity target.
Reliance
Revenue: $13.84 billion (2024 net sales)
Employees: 15,000
Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona
Founded: 1939
Reliance is a diversified metal solutions provider and the largest metals service center company in North America.
Service centers like Reliance acquire primary products, such as carbon steel, aluminum, stainless steel, and alloy steel, from metals producers before processing them to their customers’ specifications, which might include custom lengths, widths, shapes, and surface characteristics.
Reliance uses value-added processing techniques such as blanking, slitting, burning, plasma burning, precision plate sawing, sawing, and shearing. It provides its 125,000 customers with more than 100,000 metal products, offering readily available inventory, value-added metals processing, reliable and timely delivery, flexible minimum order size, and quality control.
U.S. Steel
Revenue: $15.6 billion (2024)
Employees: 22,000
Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Founded: 1901
U.S. Steel is a leading steel producer, which operates throughout the U.S. and Central Europe, providing high-value-added steel products for various industries, including automotive, construction, appliance, energy, containers, and packaging.
Committed to driving sustainability, the company’s “Best for All” strategy has rapidly expanded its capabilities in integrated and mini-mill steelmaking technologies. Mini mills — smaller and more flexible than traditional steel production facilities — leverage EAFs to melt scrap metal and produce more sustainable steel.
Following its 2021 acquisition of Big River Steel, the company introduced two advanced and sustainable steel solutions, verdeX and induX. These “game-changing steels” are infinitely recyclable, contain up to 90% recycled steel content, and reduce carbon emissions by up to 75%.
In February 2023, the company announced it would supply General Motors with its verdeX steel products. “We are pleased to join GM in its mission to promote a world with zero emissions by providing such an advanced and sustainable steel product,” said U.S. Steel Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Ken Jaycox. “Our verdeX steel offers both the advantages of advanced high-strength steel and low manufacturing emissions.”
Cleveland-Cliffs
Revenue: $19.2 billion (2024)
Employees: 30,000
Headquarters: West Chester Township, Ohio
Founded: 1847
First established as an iron ore mining company, Cleveland-Cliffs is North America’s largest flat-rolled steel producer and supplier of iron ore pellets. From mined raw materials to primary steelmaking to downstream stamping, tooling, and tubing, the company has successfully established a vertically integrated business model, which provides a competitive advantage over steelmakers dependent on sourcing their raw materials from external sources.
The automotive sector is Cleveland-Cliff’s biggest market, purchasing around one-third of its total steel production. The company’s innovative steel products, which include a wide range of complex auto parts and components, enable automakers to develop safer, lighter, and more efficient vehicles.
In 2020, Cleveland-Cliffs established a new facility in Toledo, which is currently the world’s most modern, efficient, and environmentally friendly Direct Reduction Plant. The Toledo plant produces hot-briquetted iron (HBI), which is an environmentally-friendly and premium alternative to scrap and imported pig iron and is optimally located for receiving iron ore pellets from the company’s Northshore Mining facility in Minnesota and serving customers throughout the Great Lakes region.
Commercial Metals Company (CMC)
Revenue: $6.1 billion
Employees: 13,000
Headquarters: Irving, Texas
Founded: 1915
A leader in the metals industry for more than 100 years, CMC manufactures, recycles, and fabricates a wide range of steel products that form the backbone of buildings, highways, bridges, and various other structures worldwide.
It sells ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metals, produces a range of long steel products, and provides fabricated rebar for reinforcing concrete in commercial and non-commercial buildings. It also manufactures rebars, merchant bars, and wire rods.
Sustainability is at the heart of CMC’s operations, which process 100% recycled steel. Its recycling facilities collect end-of-life materials from individuals, commercial companies, and scrap yards before processing them—via state-of-the-art EAF technology—to use as raw materials. The manufacturer even collects and recycles 99% of the baghouse dust from its EAF furnaces to create additional products, including paints, tire rubber, and fertilizers.
Compared with traditional steelmaking, CMC’s processes produce 64% less carbon and use 82% less energy.
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