Steel Products

Cliffs Pushes Back Burns Harbor 'C' Blast Furnace Reline to '26

Written by Laura Miller

July 25, 2023

Cleveland-Cliffs is pushing back the reline of the C blast furnace at its Burns Harbor steel mill in northwest Indiana, executives said on the company’s second quarter earnings call on Tuesday, July 25.

The BF reline, originally planned for 2025, has been pushed to 2026, CFO and executive VP Celso Goncalves said on the call.

Chairman, president, and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said the change was based on updated operational information. “Through this quarter, our conviction is that the furnace is in great shape,” he said, thus “the postponement to 2026 is perfect.”

The Burns Harbor plant, Cliffs’ second-largest facility, has two BFs and can produce nearly 5 million net tons of raw steel annually. Both its C and D furnaces have daily iron-making capacities of 7,400 tons, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table.

When asked about the reline schedule across Cliffs’ operations, Goncalves explained that relines were completed at its largest BF, No. 7 in Indiana Harbor, in 2021 and at its Cleveland Works last year. The next BF in line after Burns Harbor would be at Middletown Works in Ohio, “but it’s not going to happen before 2027,” he said.

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. Since 2007, she has held various editorial and marketing positions with steel industry publications, associations, and mills. In 2021, after a five-year hiatus working across other industries, she returned to steel trade journalism, joining SMU in 2022. She is a member of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries and a past-president of the AWMI Pittsburgh Chapter. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at laura@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7869.

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