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.
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
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