Steel Development Co. will spend $175 million on a rebar manufacturing plant in Amory.

Company and local officials broke ground Thursday on the 80,000-square-foot plant, which will employ 200 jobs. The facility will be located near the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in the Amory Port Industrial Park.

It is scheduled to open in the spring of 2010.

SDC chairman/CEO John Correnti says the plant will process an average of 500 to 800 automobile’s worth of scrap metal each day and turn it into rebar.

Steel rebar is used as reinforcement in concrete.