Steel Mills

Cliffs To Restart IH No7 Blast Furnace After Weekend Fire

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

Michael Cowden is managing editor for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He specializes in flat-rolled steel but has also reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube, and aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.