Steel Mills

Cliffs Plans Burns Harbor BF Reline for 2025

Written by Ethan Bernard

April 27, 2023

Cleveland-Cliffs is planning a blast-furnace reline at its Burns Harbor operations in northwest Indiana in 2025, a company executive said.

Discussing capital expenditures on a Q1 earnings conference call with investors on Tuesday, Cliffs EVP and CFO Celso Goncalves said the company expected cap-ex ~$700 million in 2023-24.

“Now when you get to 2025 and beyond, and then you have some additional relines and things like that, it could increase again,” Goncalves said. He then confirmed the Cleveland-based steelmaker was targeting a blast-furnace reline at Burns Harbor in 2025.

The plant, Cliffs’ second-largest US facility, has two blast furnaces, and can produce nearly 5 million net tons of raw steel annually, according to Cliffs’ website.

The two blast furnaces, C and D, each have 7,400 tons of daily iron-making capacity, according to SMU’s blast furnace data.

A spokesperson for Cliffs did not respond to a request for additional detail.

By Ethan Bernard, ethan@steelmarketupdate.com

Ethan Bernard

Ethan Bernard is managing editor for Steel Market Update. He previously worked for American Metal Market as a copy editor in the New York office for two years, starting in 2008. Later, he copy edited AMM’s monthly magazine on a freelance basis from 2015 until 2017. With experience in financial copywriting and textbook publishing, he holds a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, and an MFA. in Creative Writing from New York University. He can be reached at ethan@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7871.

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