Steel Mills
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/media/k2/items/src/b42a074f86ab2b5957762b8b24ff0d65.jpg)
Cliffs Blast Furnace Status Update - All 8 Running: CEO
Written by Michael Cowden
April 22, 2021
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is running all eight of its active blast furnaces and has no plans to take significant downtime in the second quarter, the company’s top executive said.
“We do not have any major outages scheduled in Q2. We are focused on getting steel out the door,” Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said during a conference call with analysts on Thursday, April 22.
Goncalves had said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the No. 7 furnace at Cliff’s Indiana Harbor steelmaking campus in northwest Indiana–the largest furnace in North America–would go down for maintenance after repairs to the blast furnace at its Middletown Works in Ohio were complete.
Work on the Middletown furnace is complete. And so it appears that no outage at Indiana Harbor No. 7 is happening until the third quarter at the earliest.
Close observers of the steel industry might note that Goncalves’ tally of eight furnaces is two fewer than the 10 blast furnaces he counted as being among Cliff’s portfolio during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
The reason: Cliff’s blast furnace in Ashland, Ky., acquired in its deal for the former AK Steel, has been permanently idled. “That’s dead. So take it out,” Goncalves said as he ticked through the status of each the company’s furnaces.
Also indefinitely idled is the No. 3 furnace at Indiana Harbor. “That’s dead. It’s not going to come back. Ever,” he said.
Goncalves swatted away rumors that the furnaces might be restarted to supply pig iron to electric-arc furnace (EAF) steelmakers. “Please, forget about that. … It’s not going to happen. Now we are no longer a supplier to EAFs, we are a competitor. So I am not going to supply them with pig iron,” he said.
Are the furnaces for sale?
“No. That’s not going to happen. They are under my control. They are not going to be supplying pig iron. And no one will buy those furnaces to produce pig iron,” Goncalves said.
The Ashland furnace, also known as Amanda, had iron-making capacity of 6,000 tons per day. The No. 3 furnace at Indiana Harbor had capacity of 2,500 tons per day. Both are dwarfed by the No. 7 furnace, which has capacity of 11,500 tons per day.
That information and updated blast furnace status intelligence can be found on SMU’s website. Go to the “Resources” tab at www.SteelMarketUpdate.com, select “Steel Mills” and then select “Furnace Status.”
Or you can simply click here.
SMU Note: Lourenco Goncalves will be speaking at this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta on August 23-25.
By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/SMU_MC_headshot-150x150.png)
Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Steel Mills
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/Featured_News_Icons/ArcelorMittal.png)
ArcelorMittal posts solid results as commissioning of Calvert EAF begins
AM/NS Calvert has begun commissioning its new electric-arc furnace, with plans to reach its full annual run rate of 1.65 million short tons a year from now.
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/Featured_News_Icons/Tampa.Steel.Conference.jpg)
Tampa Steel Conference: Tanners on rising capacities and storms brewing across steel
There's a lot of production waiting to come online
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/Featured_News_Icons/US_Steel.png)
USS idles “B” battery at Clairton following explosion
U.S. Steel has idled its "B" Battery at its Clairton Coke Works near Pittsburgh following a “release of excess pressure” inside a section of the battery on Feb. 5.
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/Featured_News_Icons/ArcelorMittal.png)
ArcelorMittal to start building Calvert NGO electrical steel line this year
ArcelorMittal announced on Thursday that it will begin the construction of its new $1.2-billion electrical steel mill in Alabama later this year. The steelmaker said it is proceeding with plans to build the new greenfield mill near its existing AM/NS joint venture in Calvert, Ala. The ArcelorMittal Calvert plant will have an annealing pickling line, […]
![](https://www.steelmarketupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/Featured_News_Icons/AISI.png)
AISI: US steel shipments rise in December
Domestic steel shipments increased month over month and year on year in December, according to the latest data from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). US steel mills shipped 7,145,016 short tons (st) in December, up 0.9% from 7,082,921 st in December 2023 and 6.6% higher than 6,702,557 st in November 2024. For the full-year […]