A decade af­ter the clo­sure of Arcelor­Mit­tal left hun­dreds job­less and a pre­mier in­dus­tri­al as­set aban­doned, a mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment de­scribed as “Lazarus aris­ing from the dead” is now bring­ing heavy man­u­fac­tur­ing back to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Lo­cal sub­sidiary Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny, backed by Unit­ed States par­ent firm Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion, of­fi­cial­ly kicked off site re­fur­bish­ment yes­ter­day, with plans to pump an over­all in­vest­ment of US$750 mil­lion in­to the de­vel­op­ment, with the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate up to 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs.

High-rank­ing diplo­mat­ic and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau, gath­ered at the fa­cil­i­ty to mark what Lan­dau called the “res­ur­rec­tion” of the na­tion’s steel in­dus­try and a key break­through in in­ter­na­tion­al min­er­al sup­ply chains.