Iron Ore Producer Rebrands as Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.

“As we did more than 60 years ago, when we adopted pelletizing as a smart business opportunity to utilize American iron ore and provide the domestic blast furnaces with customized pellets, Cleveland-Cliffs is once again reinventing itself as the supplier of high-quality iron units to the Great Lakes region. With our expansion into the production of Hot-Briquetted Iron (HBI) to supply the growing electric arc furnace steel industry, Cleveland-Cliffs is the best name to represent our strong present and our bright future.”

Cliffs was founded in 1847 and is the largest and oldest mining company in the United States. Its mines and pellet plants located in Michigan and Minnesota supply iron ore pellets to the North American steel industry. The company will begin construction of its first HBI plant in Toledo, Ohio, in 2018 and expects to begin commercial production in 2020. The plant will have a nominal capacity of 1.6 million tons of HBI per year and make Cliffs the sole producer of HBI in the Great Lakes region. Cliffs also operates an iron ore mining complex in Western Australia.

Cliffs new name is effective immediately and does not change the company’s NYSE stock symbol “CLF.”