Steel Mills

Cliffs To Restart IH No7 Blast Furnace After Weekend Fire
Written by Michael Cowden
November 28, 2022
Cleveland-Cliffs expects to resume operations this week on the No. 7 blast furnace at its Indiana Harbor steel mill in East Chicago, Ind., after a small fire, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
The fire occurred over the weekend and at the beginning of a three-day planned maintenance outage, she told Steel Market Update on Monday, Nov. 28.
“The minor fire was extinguished immediately. There are no damages or injuries. We will be back in operation this week, as planned,” the spokeswoman said.
A three-day outage at No. 7 is notable because the blast furnace is the largest in North America. It has capacity of 11,500 tons of iron per day. It is also the only active blast furnace at Indiana Harbor, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table.
Approximately 20 miles south of Chicago, Indiana Harbor has annual steelmaking capacity of 5.5 million tons. It makes a full-range of hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and coated products – including exposed grades for the automotive industry and American Petroleum Institute (API) grades for the energy sector.
Other key markets for the mill include appliance, construction, and distribution, per a fact sheet about the plant.
By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Steel Mills

USS swings to loss in first quarter on N. American flat-rolled segment woes
U.S. Steel CEO praised the company’s resilience, “despite the seasonally low results driven by annual mining logistics constraints in our North American Flat-Rolled segment and lagging spot prices.”

Nucor gives updates on new capacity coming online
Nucor said several of its capital projects will start operations within the next year and provided an update on them.

Algoma swings to loss on ‘market challenges’ and ‘tariff uncertainties’
Canada’s Algoma Steel swung to a loss in the first quarter amid "market challenges," and the company now expects first steel production from its first EAF in the second quarter.

Ternium raises budget for Mexico project
The steelmaker now expects the new steel slab mill in Pesquería will begin operations by Q4’26.

SSAB announces $74M expansion in Alabama
The project will expand heat treat capacity at its Axis, Alabama plant