Cliffs will move toward EAFs in next decade: Goncalves

Integrated steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs will likely lean even further into electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking over the next decade.

Over time the company will move away from integrated steelmaking, which currently supplies significant volumes to the automotive industry, chief executive Lourenco Goncalves told Argus.

"We cannot have blast furnaces only for the automotive industry, you have to have them for everything," Goncalves said. "If one day I feel like I do not have the automotive industry, you will see us shutting down blast furnaces and going to EAFs.

Goncalves said that shift could happen in the next 10 years. "Will it happen under my watch? Probably, probably, because I do not plan to retire anytime soon, and I do not plan to die."

The shift would have significant implications for the North American steel industry because Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest flat-rolled steelmaker in the region and is one of the largest overall steelmakers.

Cliffs currently operates eight blast furnaces and four EAF mills.

An upcoming maintenance outage at Cleveland-Cliffs' Indiana Harbor No. 7 blast furnace — the largest in the US — will allow the mill to consume more hot-briquetted iron (HBI), a metallic that the company makes internally at a new plant in Toledo, Ohio.

That increased HBI consumption is forcing Cleveland-Cliffs to integrate its scrap buying internally, which Goncalves announced it will do on 1 September.

By Rye Druzin