Cliffs' largest furnace to take September downtime

Cleveland-Cliffs will take down the No 7 blast furnace at its Indiana Harbor East steel mill for extended maintenance in September.

The 4.2mn metric tonne (t) (4.63mn short ton/yr) blast furnace, the largest blast furnace in the US, will be idled in September for at least 45 days, according to multiple market participants. The company is working on what has been called a "mini reline" of the furnace's vessel.

The work is required maintenance that blast furnace operators undertake to prevent perforations of the vessel by molten steel.

The outage could mean that at least 571,000st of steel will not be produced between the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth quarter. The blast furnace has a production capacity of approximately 12,700 st/day.

That could exacerbate supply issues later in the year, assuming that supply has not caught up to demand at that point. For months buyers have struggled to find spot tons and many mills have held their contract customers to minimum rates of buying.

The market previously expected the outage to take place in April, and while it is unclear why the work has been delayed, steel prices have continued to break records on a weekly basis since February which could have driven decisions to delay the maintenance.

The Argus US Midwest hot-rolled coil (HRC) assessment rose today to $1,700/short ton (st), up by 28pc since April.

Cleveland-Cliffs did not respond to requests for comment on the work.

By Rye Druzin