"I believe that this year will be the year we decide whether we’re going to expand. I’d be surprised if we don’t," Bula told attendees of the S&P Global Platts Steel Markets North America conference. The 14th annual conference was held Tuesday and Wednesday in Chicago, Ill., USA.

Arkansas-based Big River has plans to double the capacity at its advanced sheet mill to 3.2 million tons annually, but it hasn’t said when it intends to execute those plans. The company also is said to be considering a second mill elsewhere in the South.

Bula, who is Big River’s chief commercial officer, also spoke about the company’s plans to move into electrical steel production, explaining that it sees opportunity in the convergence of autonomous and electrical vehicle technologies.

“We all know there’s one supplier of electrical steels in the U.S. We’d like to be the second,” he said. “We believe the opportunity for it is immense.”

He said Big River believes that there is a particular opportunity in non-oriented electrical steel, most of which is being manufactured abroad.