Goncalves: Cliffs Has No Plans to Produce Merchant Pig Iron

Though he admits it was not the original plan, Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said Wednesday at AISTech that his company no longer intends to produce merchant pig iron for sale to competitors, as has been widely speculated.

In the past two years, Cleveland-Cliffs has purchased AK Steel and ArcelorMittal USA, making it the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America. In addition to its eight blast furnaces, the company also now operates four electric arc furnaces (EAFs). It also has extensive iron ore holdings in the Minnesota iron range and opened a new plant for production of hot-briquetted iron (HBI) in Toledo, Ohio, earlier this year. So the company has something of a complicated relationship with the rest of the industry when it comes to production and consumption of scrap and scrap substitutes, as well as the need to reduce carbon emissions to stem climate change.