YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A new $48 million threading line at Vallourec Star’s seamless pipe mill along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is symbolic of the global company’s long-term commitment to the Mahoning Valley, its chairman and CEO said Monday.
“While today is a celebration of this new milestone, it is also a promise for the future,” Phillipe Guillemot told more than 150 guests and employees attending a groundbreaking ceremony at the plant Monday. “This $48 million investment is part of a long-term vision – we can already imagine further steps in the coming years.”
Preparation work inside the factory has already started on the new production line, which is expected to be commissioned sometime in early 2027. The expansion will lead to the creation of 40 full-time jobs at Vallourec’s manufacturing campus, which already employs approximately 1,000 workers.
“It represents continued confidence in America’s industrial base and in the men and women who make it thrive every day,” Guillemot said. “The workers here in Youngstown embody that spirit perfectly.”
Vallourec is a global manufacturer of oil country tubular goods – or OCTG – pipe. The pipe is used mostly in the oil and gas industries for both onshore shale and offshore energy exploration. Guillemot also noted that the market for OCTG pipe looks strong, as electricity demand stands to increase as a result of planned data centers across the country. This demand is likely to spur the construction of new combined-cycle power plants, which use natural gas as stock fuel.
The new thread mill uses advanced technology to apply connections at the end of Vallourec’s seamless tube. These connections are especially important to remain competitive in the shale industry, in which energy companies are using longer pipe laterals in horizontal drilling operations.
“A thread line puts a connection on the end of the pipe that allows us to connect two pieces of pipe together as they go into the ground in order to case the well for oil and gas exploration,” said Gary Hauck, president of Vallourec Star. “It will be highly automated. There will be some robotics on the line.” Hauck also added that present trade policy — especially tariffs on imported tube products — have had a positive impact on manufacturers such as Vallourec.
Elected officials including Gov. Mike DeWine attended the ceremony Monday, along with community, business and development leaders who praised the new investment.
“It is significant that on this site and in this area, steel has been made for more than 100 years. It’s a great day for the Mahoning Valley,” DeWine said. Vallourec’s campus is situated where Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. operated its Brier Hill plant.
In 2012, Vallourec, a French corporation based near Paris, invested $1 billion to build a new seamless tube mill at the site on land next to an older mill that was once operated by Sheet & Tube.
“This is exactly what we need,” DeWine said. “We’re a manufacturing state. This is a French company that once again has said we value Ohio and we value the people of the Mahoning Valley.”
DeWine noted that some of the steel pipe manufactured at Vallourec’s Youngstown campus is used for oil and gas exploration in the Utica/Point Pleasant shale formation in Ohio. “Some of the steel is going to go right into the ground in eastern Ohio,” he said. “So that’s exciting.”
The governor also lauded the different partnerships and collaborations between the various development agencies and organizations that helped push the project forward. Among these are JobsOhio and its local partner, Lake to River Economic Development, and the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
In the past five years, DeWine said that economic development projects are up 71% in the Mahoning Valley compared with the previous five years. He added new jobs have increased 45%, while total payroll is up 110%. “We are moving in the right direction,” he said. “I have great confidence in this part of the state, and I think our best days are ahead of us.”
Alexa Sweeney Blackann, interim CEO of Lake to River, said this project is especially a sign of confidence in the people, workforce and talent found in the Mahoning Valley. “It’s a signal to the 40 new employees who will join Vallourec that you matter; your jobs matter; your skills matter.”
Lake to River is the regional development partner of JobsOhio, the nonprofit economic development arm of the state of Ohio. Lake to River was created last year to oversee new regional development projects across Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana and Ashtabula counties. Blackann added that the organization is working on another 30 projects in the pipeline that total approximately $3 billion and bring another 1,000 jobs to the region.
“We really depend on our regional partners to help us go from a state perspective to a local perspective very quickly,” said J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of JobsOhio. “I do think that this is the kind of success that Gov. DeWine and Lt. Gov [Jim] Tressel envisioned when they advocated for establishing this new region.”
U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, R-6th, emphasized that energy independence and its development is key to national security interests. “You can’t be the world’s leading superpower without energy – energy is the key to everything you do, especially business.”
Guy Coviello, president and CEO of the Regional Chamber, lauded what he said was a level of cooperation that’s never been witnessed in the Mahoning Valley between local, regional, state and federal entities to bring projects such as Vallourec to fruition.
“We’re seeing something we’ve never seen before – an unprecedented level of collaboration among our regional partners,” he said, noting agencies such as the Western Reserve Port Authority and the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments are instrumental in helping with workforce training, infrastructure and housing initiatives.
“Today marks another milestone – a $48 million expansion, 40 new jobs,” Coviello said of Vallourec. “Most importantly, it secures the 1,000 current jobs that make family-sustaining wages, making Vallourec one of the Valley’s Top 10 private, for-profit employers.”
Pictured at top: Phillipe Guillemot, Vallourec chairman and CEO, speaks during Monday’s event.