ATOKA, OK – A big company is coming to the small town of Atoka, OK. And not only is it a green business doing good for the environment, but also doing good for the community. And Atoka Industrial leaders believe bringing in Oklahoma Materials Recycling, LLC, will have an annual economic impact of more than $10 million.

While Atoka may not be known for its size, the people’s hospitality and enthusiasm drew OMR to the city.

“The town, the people, we felt comfortable, they felt more like our kind of our people,” said Bob Lupini, Manager Director.

And in a town of only 3,000 people, creating 50 new jobs and $2 million in annual payroll is a big slice of the local economy.

'It culminates 15 years of investment by this city into the prospects of attracting industry into this city,” said Atoka Mayor Charles McCall III.

Another aspect that made Atoka a great place to build this company was Atoka’s Industrial Park. Lupini said the developed area with easy accessibility and buildings already in place made it a prime location.

“We visited other sites, having the structure in place, a building we could quickly occupy was very important to us,” said Lupini.

In addition to using that 30,000 square foot building as a warehouse, they'll also construct an 80 foot processing tower next door.

In that tower is where the recycling happens; taking waste from the oil industry and converting into a useful material for the steel industry. OMR extracts molybdenum from industrial feedstock with a patented one-step process. Once extracted, the molybdenum is used in the manufacturing of stainless steel.

“We can take waste material that sometimes ends up in landfills and recover good effective materials out of it,” said Lupini.

But the $20 million deal for the project almost didn’t go through.

“There was talk at the state legislature about closing the rural investment tax credits down, which would have completely killed this project,” said Mayor McCall.

But State Legislators stepped in, giving them the time needed to close the deal with those tax credits.

"We all came to the conclusion that if we could make it work this is where we wanted to be,” said Lupini.

Mayor McCall estimates that the average salary for employees at OMR will be about $50,000 a year with benefits. There will be a job fair in late fall, and then in 9 to 12 months OMR should be up and running.