Steel Products Prices North America

Cleveland-Cliffs CEO: "We See a Huge Opportunity"
Written by Sandy Williams
September 12, 2019
“If you want to be successful in this business you need to understand the market you serve,” said Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves at the Credit Suisse Basic Materials Conference on Tuesday. Goncalves appears to know what he is doing, having transformed Cleveland-Cliffs from a failing enterprise into a solid business with a unique market position.
The shift from a steel industry that was two-thirds blast furnace to one that is now two-thirds EAF led to a new strategy for Cliffs. Divesting itself of its coal operations, Cliffs is now 100 percent focused on iron ore and, in particular, supplying quality iron ore pellets to the expanding minimill market.
“EAFs need metallics, that’s EAF by the book; you melt scrap, you get steel, that’s great,” said Goncalves. But as scrap is repeatedly remelted, it becomes contaminated by deleterious elements like copper, making it unfit for use in high-end steel. These elements must be diluted by adding pure iron units. There is not enough prime scrap available in the U.S. to keep up with EAF demand, so the solution is iron ore pellets, said Goncalves.
EAFs in the U.S. import pellets from four main sources—Brazil, Venezuela, the Ukraine and Russia. The pellets are expensive to ship to the Great Lakes region and the quality is unreliable, said Goncalves.
“The fact of the matter is that the four sources of metallics that the EAFs use in the United States are all very close to being shut down,” said Goncalves. To service a growing need in the steel industry, Cliffs is constructing an HBI facility in Toledo, Ohio, that will supply pellets to EAFs in the Midwest and beyond.
“We are going to have simplified logistics, minimal lead times, and in most cases we’re going to do just-in-time with our clients. The EAFs will be exposed to our reliability and the repeatability of the specs that they are not used to,” said Goncalves. Cliffs claims its new plant will be the only HBI facility in the world supplied by a single source of iron ore, in this case its Northshore Mining operation in Minnesota.
The new HBI plant will be Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) rated and will produce 1.9 million metric tons of HBI annually. The stock for the HBI plant will require 2.8 million long tons of iron ore pellets from the 20 million tons that Cliffs produces. Construction is ahead of schedule and initial production is expected in the first half of 2020.
Said Goncalves, “We see a huge opportunity for us among the EAFs, so for three to five years we’re in phenomenal shape.”

Sandy Williams
Read more from Sandy WilliamsLatest in Steel Products Prices North America

Thin demand keeps plate prices hovering at lowest levels since February
Participants in the domestic plate market say spot prices appear to have hit the floor, and they continue to linger there. They say demand for steel remains thin, with plate products no exception.

SMU Price Ranges: HR crawls back to $800/ton
SMU’s HR price stands at $800/st on average, up $5/st from last week. The modest gain came as the low end of our range firmed, and despite the high end of our range declining slightly.

SMU successfully completes IOSCO review
SMU has successfully completed an external review of all our prices. The review has concluded that they algin with principles set by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

Domestic plate prices could heat up despite so-so demand, market sources say
Some sources also speculated that plate could see further price increases thanks to modest but steady demand, lower imports, mill maintenance outages, and end markets less immediately affected by tariff-related disruptions.

SMU Price Ranges: HR holds, galv slips amid competing market narratives
SMU’s sheet and plate prices see-sawed this week as hot-rolled (HR) coil prices held their ground while prices for galvanized product slipped.