Steel Mills

SMU Updates Blast Furnace Table to Reflect Indiana Harbor Demolitions

Written by Michael Cowden

May 7, 2021

Steel Market Update has revised its blast furnace status chart to reflect that two furnaces at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Indiana Harbor steelmaking complex in East Chicago, Ind., have been razed.

The No. 5 and No. 6 blast furnaces have not been operated since 2010, were decommissioned in 2015 and have since been demolished, a spokeswoman for the integrated steelmaker confirmed.

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That means there are only two blast furnaces operating at Indiana Harbor: the No. 7 furnace at Indiana Harbor East and the No. 4 furnace at Indiana Harbor West.

The No. 7 blast furnace, with daily ironmaking capacity of 11,500 tons per day, is the largest in North America.

The much smaller No. 4 furnace has capacity of 4,900 tons per day.

The No. 3 blast furnace at Indiana Harbor West has been indefinitely idled, Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said during an earnings conference call last month.

The result: there are only three blast furnaces physically still present at Indiana Harbor, down from five operating blast furnaces in 2010.

That information comes from SMU’s blast furnace status chart, which can be found by clicking here.

Indiana Harbor East was part of the former Inland Steel and Indiana Harbor West was part of the former LTV Steel. The two competing mills, separated by a ship canal, were merged by ArcelorMittal, according to The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI).

The mill–also the largest heavy industry area in the U.S., per the CLUI–was acquired by Cliffs in its deal for ArcelorMittal USA, which closed in December.

Indiana Harbor, established nearly 120 years ago, makes hot-rolled, cold-rolled, hot-dipped galvanized, and aluminized sheet, according to Cliffs’ website.

By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is editor-in-chief 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.

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