NATCHEZ — To stay environmentally safe, many of America’s power plants turn to Dynasteel, a rapidly growing metal fabrication company with a factory in Natchez.

Dynasteel, which has doubled in size in the past 18 months, does a variety of metal duct work, but much of its focus is on power plants.

“If it’s made out of steel we can build it, have built it and hope to build it again,” Quality Control Manager Reed Fleming said.

The power plant duct looks very similar to a square, steel air conditioning duct, but on a larger scale — a much larger scale. Each piece of duct is approximately 33 feet tall.

“It carries the fumes off the boilers and through the scrubber system,” Fleming said. “It’s all tied to the environmental issues at power generation plants. It gets rid of the (nitrous oxide) and various impurities that exhaust from the fossil fuels they burn.”

Despite the massive size of these ducts, Dynasteel is looking to build bigger.

“Right now our limitations are the transportation avenues,” for getting products to the port and on barges, he said. “We build stuff that maximizes the capacity of the crane they currently have (at the port).”

Within the last year, they made a 60 by 600 foot addition to the factory.

They are also getting an automated beam saw and building an enclosure for it.

The company has grown quickly, despite being small just a few years ago.

Dynasteel’s Natchez division was down to only one person in 2003 — now they employ 228 people and have an 80,000 square foot facility.

“It really was due to the economy and the amount of work on the street itself,” Fleming said. “It seems like the economy hasn’t slowed down very much in the past five or six years.”

And as Dynasteel makes more additions and the port gets a bigger crane, the company will hire more people.

“We have to have more man power to generate the work,” Fleming said. “We continually have an ongoing need for more people.”

Dynasteel employs a lot of welders. Most of the ductwork is made from steel beams and sheet metal that has to be fused together.

Fleming said the company prefers to hire locally, but needs people who are qualified in all three types of welding. This is where a partnership with Copiah-Lincoln Community College helps, said Tom Myers, director of safety and human resources.

“Co-Lin does provide us with training assets,” Myers said. “That’s for the primary purpose of increasing the skill level of our employees.”

Dynasteel provides the college with much of the equipment needed to teach welding and Co-Lin provides training for employees.

“They can come in unskilled and it allows them to progress their skill and their career,” Myers said.

“We recognize the folks, and we promote from within as much as possible.”

Dynasteel also supports the community by sponsoring schools, particularly Adams County Christian School and events, like the Phatwater Kayak Race.

“We want to bring more things like that to the Miss-Lou because we want to see growth and progression,” Myers said.

Dynasteel is also helping the community in a more indirect way, said Jeff Rowell, executive director of the Natchez-Adams Development Authority.

“There’s a lot of direct benefit, but there will be a lot of indirect benefit,” he said. “The same dollars will turn over several times in the local community.

“It’s because of their growth we were able to improve our port area, which will help us in our recruiting effort,” he said.

One of the main improvements to the port is the new crane that they are getting, which will not only help Dynasteel produce bigger projects, but will help attract new industry, Rowell said.

“We’re really glad to have them here and we’re really proud to be able to help them,” Rowell said.

Dynasteel has been in business since 1970 and the Natchez branch has been open since 1987.

“Right now Natchez is our flagships plant,” Dynasteel CEO Jim Russell said. “We do more out of Natchez than we do out of Memphis or Iuka.

“It’s probably the best port for what we do between St. Louis and the coast. We were able to see that and we were able to buy a plant there.”