Cleveland-Cliffs has spent more than $100 million to upgrade its giant plant in Silver Bay to produce a purer form of iron ore pellets that it says will ensure the long-term viability of its Northshore Mining operation in northeastern Minnesota.
Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week to celebrate completion of the upgrades that the new pellets will ensure that the plant, which dates from the mid-1950s, will continue to operate "for at least another 100 years," Minnesota Public Radio reported.
The company says the upgraded plant is the first U.S.-based iron ore processing facility to produce the new kind of low-silica pellet. These purer pellets, in turn, can be used to make "direct reduced iron," which can be used in newer-style electric arc furnace steel mills that now make nearly 70% of all American steel but require purer feedstocks. Most of these "mini mills" primarily use scrap steel.
That contrasts with traditional taconite pellets from Minnesota's Iron Range, which feed old-style blast furnace steel mills around the Great Lakes.
Northshore Mining is now capable of producing up to 3.5 million tons of the specialized "DR-grade" pellets every year, in addition to about 2 million tons of traditional pellets. Most of the new pellets will be shipped to a new $830 million iron plant Cliffs plans to open in Toledo, Ohio, next year, where they will be processed further into hot-briquetted iron for use in electric arc furnaces.
"Being able to create a new base of customers for Northshore is huge," said the plant's general manager, Paul Carlson. "And the excitement that the workforce has due to that extra job security is just amazing."
The Northshore plant, which employs more than 500 people, produced its first batch of new pellets June 20 after 13 months of construction. Now, a towering pile of some 200,000 tons of pellets sits outside the plant, waiting to be loaded onto huge freighters and shipped across the Great Lakes.
After a major downturn in the steel industry several years ago, Minnesota's iron mines are back and running at full capacity, and Northshore is well positioned to serve the evolving steel industry, U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents the area, said at the event in Silver Bay.
"Today is an unbelievably important day for northeastern Minnesota," he said, "for the men and women who want to live, work, recreate and raise a family in northeastern Minnesota with good-paying jobs."
Source: Minnesota Public Radio News |
