Westwin Elements founder and chief executive KaLeigh Long told a packed house at a town hall in early February that plans for a proposed nickel refinery in Richmond Hill were “90% finished.”
The Oklahoma company says it intends to spend $35 million to buy the abandoned Ceasarstone property off Belfast Keller Road, after spending millions more for consulting, lobbying and business and environmental studies. It hopes the refinery could be fully operational by August 2028 — and wants to overcome considerable public opposition before then.
The Current GA has identified five key issues standing in the way.
1. Site cleanup
Westwin, in some of its first public comments about its plans, said that the abandoned Caesarstone property is polluted with silica dust, arsenic and unidentified other hazardous materials. The vice president of strategic operations told The Current that the company has earmarked $350,000 to clean up the property as part of its roadmap to build a refinery.
However, the company has not publicly commented about the new road block put up this month by local authorities in its plans to buy the property.
In the wake of the company’s disclosure about the hazardous materials, Bryan County commissioners and Richmond Hill’s city council approved a formal investigation led by county attorney Aaron Keppler, citing the state law that allows county officials to manage public health or safety hazards.
Keppler has not said how long his investigation would take. However, because the law requires that property owners clean up such waste before a property could be sold, the development is likely to slow Westwin’s planned purchase.
Westwin’s vice president for strategic operations, meanwhile, said the company’s cleanup and remediation of the site, and that its planned efforts “are not part of any negotiations with Caesarstone or a government entity.”
2. Pollution permitting
Well before Westwin’s desire to buy the Richmond Hill property became publicly known, the Oklahoma company had applied on Dec. 12, 2025, to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division for an air pollution permit.
The company paid an extra $10,000 on top of the usual $3,000 application fee for an expedited review. That payment, however, does not guarantee a quick decision.
Normal processing time for an air pollution permit averages 120 to 150 days, Steve Allison, the manager of EPD’s stationary source permitting program told The Current. An expedited permit like the one Westwin paid averages 95 days.
Still, there’s a major caveat.
“Both of those timeframes do not account for the consideration of substantial public comments, which is likely for this application,” Allison said.
The public comment period ended Feb. 6 for Westwin’s application, which was filed under the name “Project Patriot,” a code name that the company said was assigned by Bryan County’s development authority during the more than year-long confidential negotiations. In light of the robust public opposition expressed at county meetings, One Hundred Miles and the Ogeechee Riverkeeper petitioned EPD before that deadline to extend that public comment period to allow residents who learned of the project belatedly to weigh in on it. The Southern Environmental Law Center also commented, calling the application “inaccurate and incomplete” and recommending that EPD deny the request for expedited permitting.
The EPD declined to extend the comment period of the public advisory, EPD spokeswoman Sara Lips said Monday.
The EPD has the discretion to extend both the public comment period as well as its own review of documents submitted by a company. It is also obliged to review and respond to all the comments in issuing a final permit. That can be a long slog. Consider the case of Twin Pines Minerals, which applied for permits to mine titanium dioxide near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. EPD was deluged with more than 70,000 public comments, many expressing opposition to the permit.
Public comment on Twin Pines closed in April 2024. More than a year later, EPD still hadn’t finalized its permit decision, when conservationists struck a deal in June 2025 to buy Twin Pines’ property to protect the swamp.
3. Zoning
Westwin intends to build its refinery at the site previously occupied by Caesarstone Technologies US, a subsidiary of the Israel-based countertop manufacturer.
Bryan County property records indicate the site is zoned as a “planned unit development,” a designation that has not changed since Caesarstone left Richmond Hill in January 2024. However, it is not clear whether that zoning status, which allows for certain light industrial uses, would also include nickel refinery operations.
Any zoning decisions or changes would be decided by Richmond Hill’s municipal authorities and elected city council.
The parcels that Westwin wants to buy were annexed to the city years ago, but officials at that time did not appear interested in studying or amending zoning designations.
4. Financing
Westwin’s chief executive KaLeigh Long touts her company’s America First mission of rebuilding critical mineral refinery capacity in the United States. The two-year-old company has raised $90 million in start-up investment and, according to Long, has $750 million in potential financing lined up that is contingent on Westwin announcing a site location.
Westwin, which is a private company, did not respond to questions from The Current asking whether its investors are all American, or U.S.-based. The company has said that it participated in meetings with the Department of Defense last September and is a member of the Critical Manufacturing Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), which is under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Closed-door talks among the state, Westwin and local leaders about the codenamed “Project Patriot” started long before the company’s public campaign. In July 2022, a policy advisor in Congressman Buddy Carter’s office sent an email connecting Westwin with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, introducing it as a company that was looking into building a cobalt refinery and joining the state’s electric vehicle supply chain.
Tax incentives have been one of the topics of intense conversations between the company and development officials in Bryan County and at the state level.
In July 2025, Carter said in his constituent newsletter that he had been on a virtual call with Westwin about its Richmond Hill plans. Yet by then, the Development Authority of Bryan County was disengaging from the Westwin courtship. The board voted to withdraw a letter offering incentives to the company, according to documents obtained by The Current. It’s unclear what parts of the Westwin business plan that local officials did not favor, as under state law such negotiations are confidential.
On August 6, authority CEO Ryan Purvis said in an email to his board that he had delivered the “tough” news to Westwin with state staff listening in. He added that Long was still interested in the project and the Caesarstone property, and that she wanted to present more details to the development authority.
“What part of NO don’t you understand,” responded Gene Wallace, a member of the county commission and of the DABC board.
Local banker Jon Seagraves, who is also a development authority member, said he wasn’t interested in hearing more from Long.
“I do not believe there is anything KaLeigh could offer in person to change the consensus here. I personally am ready to put this one to bed from an incentives perspective as this is our only decision in this process,” Seagraves wrote in an email to his colleagues.
Long and a company vice president subsequently asked at least two commissioners for calls, and some Westwin officials got a meeting with a third.
The company would need approval from both county commissioners and the DABC for its plan to sell $230 million in bonds through the authority.
Long told a standing-room-only town hall meeting in early February that her plans to relocate to Richmond Hill would not hinge on local incentives.
5. Raw materials
The Trump administration has said that nickel refining capacity is in America’s national security interest because highly refined nickel is utilized in naval vessels, aerospace and high-tech batteries. Yet much of the raw mineral that Westwin would use in its planned refinery would be sourced from overseas.
Westwin plans include importing its necessary mineral-rich feedstock through the Port of Savannah and trucking it to Richmond Hill for refining and again for transport to eventual clientele.
It is unclear how much of the purified nickel refined at the plant would be destined for U.S.-based manufacturers or companies, or exported overseas to other clients.
Westwin has announced two commercial agreements to date. One is a $350 million deal with a Turkish conglomerate in which the American refinery has promised to deliver 2,600 metric tons of the highly refined nickel for resale in Turkey and Turkish allies. The second, valued at more than $1 billion, is with a New York-based company called Traxys, a global mineral trader with expertise in marketing, logistics, distribution, and supply chain management.
Westwin officials said that the traffic to the planned Richmond Hill site would include approximately 75 trucks per day.