NUCOR CORPORATION · NYSE: NUE · PUBLIC COMPANY BRIEF · 13 SEP 2026

The steelmaker that already runs on scrap.

Nucor is not trying to invent a circular steel model. It already operates one. The company reports more than 20 million tons of scrap recycled annually, average steel-product recycled content of 79.1%, up to 90% process-water recycling at EAF facilities, and recovery of more than 90% of EAF dust. The next decision is a customer-qualified grade, melt shop and scrap specification where traceability, performance and embodied-carbon evidence are joined.

EAF mini-mill, scrap-based production Evidence grade B · strong at corporate/SEC level, thin at plant level Packaging, construction & resource materials · Metals & mining

Nucor Corporation

Public company brief

Public materials brief.

FY2025 revenue

$32.49B

31 Dec 2025 · SEC XBRL

TRI facility leads

2024 U.S. match, unresolved

Production route

EAF mini-mill

Company reported, primary route

Zinc compounds managed

219.0M lb

2024 TRI aggregate, 79 facilities

Owned scrap subsidiary

DJJ

David J. Joseph Company

Company flow

Public evidence, arranged around Nucor’s physical production system rather than the corporate org chart. Nucor’s defining structural fact sits upstream of any single product: it is overwhelmingly an electric-arc-furnace (EAF) “mini-mill” steelmaker, melting recycled steel scrap rather than reducing virgin iron ore through a blast furnace.

01 · MATERIALS IN

Recycled steel scrap, plus alloying elements

Recycled ferrous scrap is Nucor’s primary raw material, sourced substantially through its own David J. Joseph Company (DJJ) scrap subsidiary; zinc, manganese, and other alloying and coating metals supplement the scrap charge.

Company reported, structural

02 · MAKE

Electric-arc-furnace mini-mills

Nucor’s mills melt scrap in electric arc furnaces rather than reducing iron ore through a blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF), a structurally different, less carbon- and virgin-material-intensive production route.

Company reported

03 · PRODUCTS OUT

Bar, plate, sheet, structural steel & downstream products

Steel bars, plate, sheet, structural shapes, and rebar, plus downstream fabricated products including steel joists and deck sold through Nucor’s own downstream-products operations.

Company described

04 · WASTE OUT

TRI-reported zinc compounds & EAF dust

219.0M lb of zinc compounds reported managed in 2024 across 79 matched U.S. facilities; EAF dust generated while melting galvanized scrap is a federally listed (K061) hazardous waste requiring its own management stream.

Listed-chemical & listed-waste view

What is public now

Ticker / CIKNYSE: NUE · SEC CIK 0000073309

FY2025 revenue$32.49B, period ended 31 Dec 2025 (SEC XBRL)

Production modelElectric-arc-furnace (EAF) mini-mill steelmaking, scrap-based, not the integrated blast-furnace/basic-oxygen-furnace (BF-BOF) route used by many global steelmakers

Public plant signal79 U.S. facilities matched to a Nucor parent name in the 2024 TRI dataset; three (Berkeley, SC; Blytheville, AR; Gallatin, KY) carry enough public detail here to treat as candidate facility leads

Decision entryA named mill, grade, and scrap-sourcing relationship is the workable starting point. Nucor’s scale spans dozens of individual steelmaking and downstream-products facilities

What the public record tells us

Circularity signal: Nucor’s primary feedstock is already the circular material, recycled steel scrap, that many other heavy-industry sectors are still trying to build a supply chain toward. That does not mean Nucor needs no material transition work; it changes the nature of the work, from “find a circular substitute” to “secure, upgrade, and de-risk an already-circular supply.”

Owned scrap-supply signal: Nucor owns The David J. Joseph Company (DJJ), a scrap-metal recycling, brokerage, and processing business that is Nucor’s own vertically integrated scrap-sourcing subsidiary, a genuine, well-documented corporate-structure fact, not a hypothesis. See the bespoke tab for detail.

Waste signal, with a caveat: Matched 2024 TRI records show 219.0M lb of zinc compounds managed nationally. One of the three named facility leads, Nucor Steel-Berkeley (Huger, SC), carries a secondary TRI parent-name match to JFE Shoji America Holdings Inc alongside Nucor Corp, a signal of a possible joint-venture, trading-partner, or shared-infrastructure relationship at that site that requires facility-level confirmation before assuming single-owner Nucor control.

Regulatory and certification signals

Regulatory watchlistClean Air Act EAF NESHAP rules, RCRA hazardous-waste management (EAF dust, K061), TRI zinc-compound reporting

Certification & reporting familiesCompany sustainability reporting on Scope 1/2 emissions intensity; ISO 14001 site-level environmental management where in place

How to use this viewFull detail sits in the Regulatory & innovation tab: connect each requirement to a named mill before treating it as applicable

Innovation and recovery signals

Material innovationDirect-reduced iron (DRI) / hot-briquetted iron (HBI) production at Nucor Steel Louisiana, supplementing scrap for higher-purity grades

Recovery pathwaysDJJ scrap processing and grading; EAF dust and mill-scale recovery under RCRA-managed streams

Commercial lensMatch mill, grade, and scrap-sourcing relationship separately. There is no single Nucor plant to standardize a pitch against

Mini-mills, scrap supply & the David J. Joseph Company

Nucor’s production route is the single most important thing to understand before proposing any material transition work: it already runs on a circular material. This tab explains the electric-arc-furnace (EAF) mini-mill model, Nucor’s owned scrap-supply subsidiary, and how the three named TRI facility leads fit into that picture.

Structural circularity, company reported

EAF mini-mills vs. integrated BF-BOF steelmaking

Two fundamentally different routes make steel. Traditional integrated steelmaking reduces virgin iron ore and coking coal through a blast furnace into molten pig iron, then refines it in a basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF), a route that is capital-intensive, hard to idle or restart, and dependent on continuous virgin ore and coal inputs. Nucor’s mills instead melt recycled steel scrap directly in an electric arc furnace (EAF), a process that can run on a majority-scrap charge, cycle production up and down more flexibly, and does not require a blast furnace, coking operation, or sintering plant at all. Because scrap steel can be recycled repeatedly without losing its essential metallurgical properties, an EAF mini-mill’s primary material input is already the circular material that a BF-BOF producer would need a separate transition strategy to reach. Treat “overwhelmingly EAF-based” as company-reported and consistent with Nucor’s public description of itself as North America’s largest steel producer and largest recycler of any material; a facility-by-facility production-route audit is outside this source set.

The David J. Joseph Company: Nucor’s owned scrap-supply chain

The David J. Joseph Company (DJJ) is a scrap-metal recycling, brokerage, and processing business that Nucor owns outright, a genuine, publicly documented corporate-structure fact, not a hypothesis built from category matching. DJJ collects, processes (shredding, shearing, sorting, grading), and brokers ferrous and non-ferrous scrap, giving Nucor a vertically integrated supply chain for its single most important raw material rather than relying solely on the open scrap market. This is the commercial engine behind the “already circular” claim above: Nucor does not just melt scrap, it owns a meaningful piece of the machinery that sources, sorts, and upgrades that scrap before it ever reaches a furnace. Verify DJJ’s current scope, site count, and processing volume against Nucor’s own investor and DJJ-branded materials before citing a specific figure.

Named mills: candidate owned-and-operated facilities

Facility	TRI ID	2024 zinc compounds	Status
Nucor Steel-Berkeley, Huger, SC	29450NCRST1455H	32,054,029 lb	Co-parent match: confirm before assuming sole control
Nucor Steel-Arkansas, Blytheville, AR	72315NCRST7301E	28,453,344 lb	Unknown until validated
Nucor Steel Gallatin LLC, Warsaw, KY	41096GLLTNUS42W	21,974,191 lb	Unknown until validated

All three are candidate facility leads from parent-name matching against 2024 U.S. TRI records, excluded from any owned/operated plant count until ownership and operating control are verified, the same caution applied to every company brief. Berkeley site note: the 2024 TRI record for this facility ID also carries a parent-name match to JFE Shoji America Holdings Inc alongside Nucor Corp, a signal of a possible joint-venture, trading-partner, or shared-infrastructure relationship at that specific site that requires facility-level confirmation before assuming single-owner Nucor control. That said, all three facility names (“Nucor Steel-Berkeley,” “Nucor Steel-Arkansas,” “Nucor Steel Gallatin LLC”) match Nucor’s own naming convention for its steel divisions exactly, which is a stronger signal than some other companies’ TRI parent-matching false positives: these read as plausible actual Nucor mini-mills, not incidental name collisions.

Why this matters for a transition pitch

Do not open a Nucor conversation with “help you go circular.” Nucor’s own public positioning is that it already melts scrap as its primary input and already brands itself as North America’s largest recycler of any material. The workable entry points are narrower and more technical: higher-purity/lower-residual scrap grades for exposed automotive and appliance sheet applications, scrap-quality and sorting technology at DJJ-processed volumes, and slag or EAF-dust valorization at named mills: see the Opportunities tab.

Products leaving the mills

Publicly described product families across Nucor’s steel-mill and downstream-products operations. Steel packaging and cans are a real but minor end-market application layered on top of these core product lines, not a standalone Nucor packaging business.

Company described

Steel bar products

Merchant bar, special bar quality (SBQ), and light structural shapes sold to metal service centers, forgers, and manufacturers.

Automotive, industrial machinery, construction end markets

Plate

Steel plate for heavy equipment, construction, shipbuilding, transportation, and energy-sector fabrication.

Sold to fabricators and OEMs, not direct-to-consumer

Sheet

Hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and coated sheet steel, including higher-purity grades supplemented with DRI/HBI for exposed automotive and appliance applications.

Automotive, appliance, and general manufacturing

Structural steel

Wide-flange beams and other structural shapes for non-residential construction and infrastructure.

Commercial and infrastructure construction

Rebar

Reinforcing bar for concrete construction, produced across multiple Nucor bar mills.

Residential, commercial, and infrastructure construction

Steel joists & deck (downstream products)

Steel joists, girders, and metal deck manufactured through Nucor’s downstream-products operations, a step further down the value chain than raw mill output.

Non-residential building construction

Packaging-adjacent note

Nucor does not run a dedicated packaging business or product line comparable to a can-sheet or tinplate producer. Steel packaging and cans are a genuine but minor downstream end-market for sheet-steel producers generally; where Nucor sheet reaches that end market, it does so as one application among many for its sheet-steel product line, not as a distinct reportable segment. Treat any specific Nucor-to-packaging volume claim as unverified in this source set.

Product and application signal

Segment and product-family descriptions are public. Plant-level output volume by product line and customer-specific specification are not publicly disclosed. Treat any specific tonnage figure as directional unless sourced to a named Nucor filing or technical data sheet.

Materials entering the system

Nucor’s “materials in” story is the inverse of most industrial companies profiled here: the dominant input is already the circular material, recycled steel scrap, not a virgin resource awaiting a substitute.

Structural circularity signal

Material family	Public signal	Transition lens
Recycled ferrous steel scrap (primary feedstock)	Company disclosed, structural	Already circular; the lever is scrap quality, sorting, and security of supply, not substitution
Direct-reduced iron / hot-briquetted iron (DRI/HBI)	Company reported (Nucor Steel Louisiana)	Virgin-ore-derived metallic supplement used to dilute tramp elements for higher-purity grades, a genuine non-scrap input worth naming honestly
Zinc (galvanizing & coating)	Public category signal (via TRI zinc-compound reporting)	Zinc-compound recovery from EAF dust and coating lines; the specific number this brief tracks in the Waste tab
Manganese & other alloying elements	Public category signal	Alloy-grade sourcing and lower-carbon alloy inputs as a supplier differentiation angle
Electricity (EAF process energy)	Public category signal	EAF steelmaking is electricity-intensive rather than fuel-intensive; grid mix and on-site power sourcing are a genuine decarbonization lever not covered in this source set

Financial scale context

$32.49B FY2025 revenue (period ended 31 Dec 2025, SEC XBRL) provides scale context for Nucor’s total raw-material purchasing. It is not a materials-purchasing figure broken out by scrap, DRI/HBI, or alloy-element spend, and Nucor does not publicly itemize scrap tonnage by mill in this source set. A separate cost-of-revenue figure in the underlying data (~$17.68B) is dated 2017-12-31 and flagged missing/stale. It is not used anywhere in this brief as a current cost figure.

Material transition focus

The practical comparison set for Nucor is not “find a circular material” but “secure and upgrade an already-circular one”: higher-purity scrap grading and sorting (often via DJJ), lower-residual scrap for exposed sheet applications, and lower-carbon alloy-element sourcing, each evaluated at the named mill and grade level.

Reported residual, water & climate signals

2024 TRI data gives a facility-level, U.S.-only view of zinc-compound reporting. Climate and water figures come from company sustainability disclosure and the structural fact of the EAF production route, not a government registry.

Parent-name TRI match plus company-reported context

U.S. TRI facility leads (parent-name match, unresolved)

Facility	TRI ID	Reported chemical	2024 total quantity	Status
Nucor Steel-Berkeley, Huger, SC	29450NCRST1455H	Zinc compounds	32,054,029 lb	Co-parent match, see note
Nucor Steel-Arkansas, Blytheville, AR	72315NCRST7301E	Zinc compounds	28,453,344 lb	Unknown until validated
Nucor Steel Gallatin LLC, Warsaw, KY	41096GLLTNUS42W	Zinc compounds	21,974,191 lb	Unknown until validated

All three are candidate facility leads from parent-name matching against 2024 U.S. TRI records. Excluded from any owned/operated plant count until ownership and operating control are verified. Berkeley site note: the 2024 TRI record for this facility ID also carries a secondary parent-name match to JFE Shoji America Holdings Inc alongside Nucor Corp, a signal of a possible joint-venture, trading-partner, or shared-infrastructure relationship at that site that requires facility-level confirmation before assuming single-owner Nucor control.

National TRI footprint (2024, aggregate across 79 matched facilities)

Facilities matched to Nucor parent name79

Total zinc compounds reported (aggregate)219,030,498 lb

On-site release (aggregate)176,457,198 lb

Transferred off-site (aggregate)26,946,787 lb

Other reported management categories (aggregate, 3 lines)307,381 lb + 1,058,711 lb + 14,431,500 lb

Category labels require verification against the EPA’s own TRI schema before this breakdown is used in a compliance or procurement context, the same caution applied to every TRI aggregate in Material Transition’s briefs. The three unlabeled “other” figures likely correspond to some combination of recycling, treatment, energy-recovery, and disposal management categories, but this source set does not confirm which figure maps to which category. Components are shown as reported and may not sum exactly to the published total due to EPA rounding or categorization conventions.

Structural climate signal: EAF vs. BF-BOF carbon intensity

Electric-arc-furnace steelmaking is widely reported across the steel industry, including in World Steel Association data, as having substantially lower direct carbon intensity per tonne of crude steel than integrated blast-furnace/basic-oxygen-furnace production, largely because it skips coke production and iron-ore reduction entirely and instead melts existing scrap. Nucor has publicly positioned its EAF-based production as a lower-carbon-intensity route on this basis. Treat the exact intensity gap as directional (it depends heavily on scrap share, grid electricity mix, and the specific mill) and confirm any current-year figure in Nucor’s own sustainability disclosure or the latest World Steel Association data before citing a specific percentage.

Water stewardship

Company sustainability reporting typically covers water withdrawal, recycling, and discharge at steelmaking sites, which use water for cooling and process purposes. Specific current-year Nucor withdrawal figures, site-level water-risk assessments, and discharge permits are not publicly disclosed in this source set and should be confirmed in Nucor’s own current sustainability report before being cited.

Scope limitation

TRI parent-name matching only reaches U.S. facilities filed under a Nucor corporate name and only covers the specific listed chemicals (here, zinc compounds) tracked in this source set. It is not a complete emissions or waste inventory for Nucor’s full U.S. footprint, and it says nothing about Nucor’s operations outside the United States.

Regulatory watchlist, certifications & innovation signals

Nucor’s dominant U.S. regulatory throughline is Clean Air Act emissions control for EAF facilities and RCRA hazardous-waste management for EAF dust, alongside TRI zinc-compound reporting.

Jurisdiction	Framework	Trigger / status
United States (federal)	Clean Air Act: EAF NESHAP (National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants)	Air-emissions control requirements specific to electric-arc-furnace steelmaking facilities
United States (federal)	RCRA: K061 listed hazardous waste	Emission-control dust/sludge from EAF steel production is a federally listed hazardous waste requiring RCRA-compliant management, commonly recycled for zinc recovery
United States (federal)	TRI (Toxics Release Inventory)	Facility-level zinc-compound and other listed-chemical release and management reporting for matched U.S. sites
United States (state/federal, general)	Clean Water Act discharge permits (NPDES)	Process and cooling-water discharge permitting applicable to steelmaking sites generally; site-specific permit terms not in this source set

Regulatory applicability has not been adjudicated per site here. This is a watchlist, not a legal conclusion.

Certification & reporting families in play

ISO 14001 Company sustainability/ESG reporting EAF NESHAP compliance

Certificate scope and current status are not verified here. Certification-family relevance does not prove an active, in-scope certificate at any named mill.

Innovation & capacity signals

DRI/HBI productionNucor Steel Louisiana (Convent, LA): company-reported direct-reduced/hot-briquetted iron facility supplementing scrap for higher-purity grades

Scrap processing & gradingThe David J. Joseph Company: shredding, shearing, sorting, and brokerage of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap

Lower-carbon positioningCompany-reported framing of EAF steelmaking as structurally lower-carbon-intensity than BF-BOF production

EAF dust / zinc recoveryK061-listed EAF dust is commonly processed for zinc recovery industry-wide; Nucor-specific recovery volumes are not in this source set

Highest-leverage public opportunities

Each hypothesis connects a public TRI, production-route, or scrap-supply signal to a specific transition pathway, ranked by fit given Nucor’s already-circular, scrap-based production model.

Higher-purity scrap sourcing & sorting

Screening candidate

Support DJJ or open-market scrap upgrading (sensor sorting, shredding, de-contamination) to expand the share of Nucor’s charge that can go into higher-value, lower-residual sheet grades.

Named mill and target grade
Scrap-quality specification and assay
Delivered economics vs. current scrap mix

Slag valorization for cement & construction use

Screening candidate

EAF slag is a high-volume steelmaking by-product with established secondary uses in cement clinker substitution, aggregate, and road base; formalizing offtake at a named mill is a concrete, low-drama opportunity.

Named mill and slag volume/assay
Receiving cement or aggregate buyer
Permit and specification fit

Mill-scale & EAF-dust recovery

Qualification open

K061-listed EAF dust is already commonly processed for zinc recovery industry-wide; the opportunity is a named-mill recovery-economics or logistics improvement, not a novel recovery pathway.

Named mill and dust volume
Zinc-recovery processor relationship
RCRA compliance fit

Lower-carbon alloy & DRI/HBI inputs

Qualification open

Lower-carbon-footprint alloying elements (manganese, zinc) and expanded DRI/HBI supply could extend Nucor’s already-favorable carbon position further, particularly for exposed-grade sheet.

Named mill and grade
Alloy or DRI/HBI supplier qualification
Carbon-intensity documentation

Priority opportunity

Start with a named mill and a named scrap or by-product stream, not the “circular steelmaker” headline. Nucor’s EAF/scrap model is real and already a competitive strength the company itself markets; the qualifying volume, specification, and receiving process sit inside a specific mill’s operations and must be evidenced there before any pilot is credible. Recommendation: pilot after evidence closure. Name one mill, one material stream, and one grade before proceeding.

Evidence register. The sources below are the public record used for this brief. Company claims, facility matches, directional hypotheses and unresolved qualification questions are kept separate. A source does not establish ownership, operating control, customer status or a supply agreement by itself.

Public source trail

Every fact in this brief traces to one of these sources, labeled by evidence strength and scope.

S1 · SEC XBRL company facts

FY2025 revenue ($32,494,000,000, period ended 2025-12-31) and CIK 0000073309. A cost-of-revenue figure in the underlying dataset is dated 2017-12-31 and flagged missing/stale; not used as a current figure in this brief.

Open source →

S2 · U.S. EPA TRI

2024 U.S. TRI Basic Data Files. Facility, parent, chemical, and management quantities for zinc compounds across 79 matched facilities, including the three named mills.

Open source →

S3 · Nucor Corporation investor relations

Company description of business segments, production model, and mill locations.

Open source →

S4 · World Steel Association

Sector-context statistics on global crude-steel production routes, including EAF share of production.

Open source →

S5 · EPA RCRA hazardous waste listing

K061 listed hazardous waste (emission-control dust/sludge from EAF steel production), for regulatory verification.

Open source →

S6 · The David J. Joseph Company

Nucor’s owned scrap-metal recycling, brokerage, and processing subsidiary, for scrap-supply-chain verification.

Open source →

Current source · Sustainability overview

Nucor, official circular steel disclosure. Added in the September 2026 evidence refresh. The source supports the bounded company-specific signal above and does not establish a buyer, supply agreement, ownership, operating control or customer qualification by itself.

Open source →

Current source · Sustainability resources and recycled-content letters

Nucor, official documents. Added in the September 2026 evidence refresh. The source supports the bounded company-specific signal above and does not establish a buyer, supply agreement, ownership, operating control or customer qualification by itself.

Open source →

Current source · 2025 circular steel and emissions targets

Nucor, official investor release. Added in the September 2026 evidence refresh. The source supports the bounded company-specific signal above and does not establish a buyer, supply agreement, ownership, operating control or customer qualification by itself.

Open source →

Current source · Investor relations

Nucor, official investor site. Added in the September 2026 evidence refresh. The source supports the bounded company-specific signal above and does not establish a buyer, supply agreement, ownership, operating control or customer qualification by itself.

Open source →

Source boundary

Scope: public company, SEC, and 2024 TRI sources, read against the structural fact of Nucor’s electric-arc-furnace, scrap-based production model. FY2025 revenue is SEC XBRL sourced; TRI is a facility-level U.S. view against a 79-facility national aggregate, with one named facility (Berkeley, SC) carrying an unresolved co-parent match to JFE Shoji America Holdings Inc; DJJ’s current scope and site count are not independently itemized here; and every opportunity is a directional hypothesis pending mill-level evidence.