POLICY A federal push to rebuild domestic minerals supply is routing real money into Minnesota. A White House announcement on Aug. 7 laid out $2 billion in new mining and critical-minerals deals, and one of the larger awards lands in central Minnesota. A $150 million conditional loan from the Department of War to Niron Magnetics for a rare-earth-free permanent-magnet plant in Sartell. The 287,000-square-foot facility is set to open in 2027 and to make 1,500 tons of iron-nitride magnets a year, with a second, 10,000-ton plant slated to break ground in 2028. The technology came out of the University of Minnesota and scaled over 13 years. The broader package leans on federal government loans, including Sila Nanotechnologies at $1.4 billion for battery anodes, Sunrise Energy Metals at $400 million for scandium, and Standard Bauxite at $85 million, plus Export-Import Bank and Development Finance Corporation financing for boron, graphite, tantalum, and rare earths. It also adds $180 million for mining-workforce and school programs, including $100 million from the Department of Energy to the country’s 14 mining schools.
Sources: White House fact sheet, Aug. 7; Mining.com, Aug. 7
BIZ Another publicly traded engineering firm is going private. Bowman Consulting agreed on Aug. 10 to be acquired by Bernhard Capital Partners, an infrastructure-focused private-equity firm with $6 billion under management, in an all-cash deal worth $1 billion. Shareholders would get $43.00 a share, a 58 percent premium to Bowman’s Aug. 7 close. Bowman, with 2,500 staff across 100 U.S. offices, does engineering, geospatial, construction-management, and environmental work. It would delist from Nasdaq once the deal closes, expected late this year or in early 2027. A 35-day go-shop window runs through Sept. 13. The deal is one more marker in a consolidation wave that keeps pulling mid-cap A/E firms into private-equity ownership, reshaping the tier of national competitors Minnesota firms bid against and recruit from.
Source: Bowman Consulting, Aug. 10
FUNDING The Senate passed the stopgap. Senators approved the funding measure 90 to 6 early on Aug. 8, extending government funding and surface-transportation programs through Dec. 11 before leaving for the recess. Earlier procedural votes only teased a trade that is now settled in the Senate-passed bill. Highway programs, funded through the Highway Trust Fund’s contract authority, stay whole, while the infrastructure law’s advance appropriations lapse, cutting public transit 20 percent and passenger rail 83 percent. The House passed a different version, so the two chambers must reconcile before the measure can be signed, with the House expected to take it up when it returns in September. Current authority and those advance appropriations expire Sept. 30.
ENG A standalone battery project is moving through state permitting near Saint Cloud. Mayhew Lake Energy Storage is a 100-megawatt battery, 400 megawatt-hours, on 37 acres in Sauk Rapids Township, Benton County, tied to Xcel Energy’s Mayhew Lake substation. State regulators issued a draft site permit on July 28, and the project is in final Public Utilities Commission review after a June application and a July scoping meeting. Standalone storage, decoupled from a paired solar or wind project, is a growing share of the commission’s energy-permitting docket, and each project carries siting, interconnection, geotechnical, and environmental scope for the firms that design and permit it.
Source: Minnesota PUC, Energy Infrastructure Permitting (Mayhew Lake)
BIZ Fluor’s Q2 shows where the big awards are flowing. The engineering and construction giant reported second-quarter results on Aug. 7 of $4.3 billion in revenue (+9 percent), adjusted earnings of $0.91 per share, and $6.1 billion in new awards, 89 percent of them reimbursable, lifting backlog to $26.9 billion. The wins clustered in data centers, life sciences, LNG, and nuclear-fuel work, though the firm narrowed its full-year profit guidance after dropping a Mexico joint venture from the outlook. The tilt toward reimbursable megaproject work at the largest firms is the same demand pattern running through the A/E majors this earnings season, and the reimbursable structure, which shifts cost risk back toward owners, is a contracting lesson worth watching as that work filters around Minnesota.
Close out the summer on the field - ACEC Minnesota’s Foundation Softball Tournament brings 16 member-firm teams together on Saturday, September 19 to support the next generation of engineers, and the four-session Emerging Leaders program for early-career staff runs this October and November. Sign up for both before spots fill up!
The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading.