Cliffs Slates 45-Day Outage for Partial Reline of IH7 Blast Furnace

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. plans to take a 45-day maintenance outage at the big No. 7 blast furnace at its Indiana Harbor steel works in East Chicago, Ind., a company spokeswoman said.

The planned outage, for a partial reline of the furnace, is scheduled to start on Sept. 1, she said.

cliffs natural resources The No. 7 furnace has capacity of 11,500 tons per day, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table – making it the largest blast furnace in North America by a wide margin.

Cleveland-Cliffs President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had said during an earnings call earlier this year that the iron ore miner and steelmaker expected to take an outage on the No. 7 furnace.

Indiana Harbor makes hot-rolled, cold-rolled, hot-dipped galvanized and aluminized sheet for a wide range of downstream industries – including automotive, appliance and distribution.

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.