Nucor Rebar Fabrication awarded by Newton Development Corporation

Newton Development Corporation this past week recognized and honored a local rebar fabricator with an award during the annual Salute to Business & Industry Luncheon, an event that commemorates the work and the impact that Newton companies have on their community.

Nucor Rebar Fabrication was awarded a plaque from NDC for its continued investment in Newton. Brian Maston, branch manager, accepted the award and gave a small presentation. The 44-year-old has worked at the company for 26 years. He started in 1999 at the age of 18 when it was called Ambassador Steel.

“We’ve been in town a long time,” Maston said. “It’s always shocking to me when I meet people in the community and they ask where I work and I tell them where I work, and nobody knows us. We kind of do a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and that’s the way we’ve always liked it. We’re at the industrial park.”

If people are not familiar with the company itself, Maston said they may at least be familiar with the loads of steel traveling through town on trucks.

Across the country, Nucor employs upwards of 45,000 people that they call “teammates.” It is a term used here in Newton, too. Nucor is the largest steel producer and recycler in the United States of America. The Fortune 500 company handles millions upon millions of tons of steel every year.

In Newton, the company mainly focuses its efforts on rebar fabrication. Nucor has 40 teammates in town working as managers, salespersons, fabricators, project managers, detailers and office administrators. Maston said fabrication workers — which make up half of the Newton branch workforce — operate in two shifts.

Maston said Nucor strives to be the world’s safest steel company. The industry itself is known for being relatively dangerous. Nucor has set out to change that by purchasing new equipment, like bending equipment, that prioritizes safety and keeps teammates’ hands out of danger zones.

“It’s been a dangerous industry in the past and we’re setting out to change that,” Maston said. “…The last five years have been the safest in the steel industry.”

The Newton branch’s work is not so easily seen to the naked eye, but Maston noted the company’s rebar can be found everywhere across Iowa. He wagered people can travel more than 10 miles down any road in the state and come across a project that has utilized rebar from Nucor.

Nucor rebar has been used in the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, the Meta data center in Altoona and the football stadiums for both Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Maston said wind farm bases have been a huge business for Nucor. In the past 20 years, it has provided rebar for 2,000 bases.

“I’m proud to be a part of this community for a long time,” Maston said. “Moving on in the future we’re looking to expand and hopefully we’ll be hiring more people and staying here in business in this community for a lot longer.”