Steel Mills
Cliffs To Restart IH No7 Blast Furnace After Weekend Fire
Written by Michael Cowden
November 28, 2022
Cleveland-Cliffs expects to resume operations this week on the No. 7 blast furnace at its Indiana Harbor steel mill in East Chicago, Ind., after a small fire, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
The fire occurred over the weekend and at the beginning of a three-day planned maintenance outage, she told Steel Market Update on Monday, Nov. 28.
“The minor fire was extinguished immediately. There are no damages or injuries. We will be back in operation this week, as planned,” the spokeswoman said.
A three-day outage at No. 7 is notable because the blast furnace is the largest in North America. It has capacity of 11,500 tons of iron per day. It is also the only active blast furnace at Indiana Harbor, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table.
Approximately 20 miles south of Chicago, Indiana Harbor has annual steelmaking capacity of 5.5 million tons. It makes a full-range of hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and coated products – including exposed grades for the automotive industry and American Petroleum Institute (API) grades for the energy sector.
Other key markets for the mill include appliance, construction, and distribution, per a fact sheet about the plant.
By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Michael Cowden
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