PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – It’s a battle over U.S. Steel and the future of steelmaking in the region – with fiery words, the CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs said his company is once again trying to buy the company.
“The United States of America, Japan, beware, you don’t understand who you are,” said Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs. Goncalves is promising to revitalize the Mon Valley while keeping the operation in American hands.
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Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. chief executive Lourenco Goncalves says he is still interested in buying United States Steel Corp. to create an American champion, as regulators continue to deliberate over whether to allow Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp. to buy the company.
Cleveland-based Cliffs, which recently acquired Canadian steelmaker Stelco Holdings Inc., attempted to buy its Pittsburgh-based competitor U.S. Steel in the summer of 2023. But Nippon Steel swooped in with a higher bid late last year that U.S. Steel’s board backed.
Mesabi Metallics lost critical state mineral leases last year, leaving an even bigger question mark over its half-built, controversial project in Nashwauk. But the company says it will finish the plant.
NASHWAUK, MINN. – An industrial resurrection seems afoot at a long-promising but snakebitten $2 billion-plus taconite project. On a crisp fall morning, a construction site in this Iron Range city teemed with workers aiming to complete a venture given up for dead by just about everybody but its owner, Mesabi Metallics.
After years of missed deadlines and financial failures, Mesabi last year permanently lost crucial state mineral leases. But Mesabi still controls private land leases in Nashwauk. And it has renewed construction of a project that was only half built when work shut down during a 2016 bankruptcy.
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Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Stelco Holdings Inc. is likely to get the nod from Ottawa, industry experts say. The Cleveland-based steel company on Monday announced it had reached a friendly deal to acquire Canadian steel maker Stelco for $3.85-billion.
Originally called the Steel Company of Canada, Stelco is the biggest steel maker in the country. Founded in 1910, it operates the Lake Erie Works steel plant and Hamilton Works, both in Ontario. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne will scrutinize the deal to make sure there are no national security concerns and that it makes economic sense for Canada under a net benefit test.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. chief executive officer Lourenco Goncalves signalled he is confident of obtaining Canadian government approval to buy Canadian steel maker Stelco Holdings Inc. a little more than a week after Ottawa tightened its foreign takeover rules.
The Cleveland-based steel giant announced its intentions on Monday to buy Hamilton-based Stelco. Cleveland-Cliffs is offering $60 a share and 0.454 of its stock for each Stelco share. The buyout is worth $70 a share, an 89-per-cent premium on Stelco’s $36.97 close on Friday and puts an enterprise value on the company of $3.4-billion.
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Middletown steel plant among projects that will slash planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
MIDDLETOWN — Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works is expected to receive a major investment up to $500 million to overhaul the ironmaking systems and install a new environmentally friendly system.
The 100% hydrogen-ready, flex-fuel direct reduction plant will be directly coupled to two electric melting furnaces to produce iron with nearly zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) office.
WASHINGTON, D. C. — Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur wants the U.S. Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to crackdown on imports of the electrical transformer components made with foreign-produced grain-oriented electrical steel of the sort produced by Cleveland-Cliffs.
Kaptur on Monday joined Zanesville Republican Rep. Troy Balderson, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly and Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb in a letter seeking relief for Cleveland-Cliffs from the imported electrical transformer parts.
It’s officially the end of an era. Cleveland-Cliffs, the 173-year-old iron ore mine operator that is becoming America’s largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, has closed on a deal to acquire ArcelorMittal USA for $1.4 billion.
It’s been called a blockbuster deal that “opens a new chapter in the history of the steel business in the United States.”
The Cleveland-based company will take over most of ArcelorMittal USA’s assets, including its steel mills along the South Shore of Lake Michigan in Northwest Indiana.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – The iron-ore mining company, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., has acquired the U.S. assets of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, for $1.4 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced Monday.
The acquisition means Cleveland-Cliffs will become the largest flat-rolled steel producer in the country, and the largest producer of iron-ore pellets, the company said.
The deal comes just months after Cleveland-Cliffs purchased AK Steel Holding Corp. for $1.1 billion in stock.
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/
The “Big Three” automakers are preparing to restart manufacturing next week, and Cleveland Cliffs, a major producer of iron ore pellets on the Iron Range, is hopeful demand for steel will return with it.
Cliffs idled its Northshore Mining iron mine and pellet plant in Babbitt and Silver Bay in April until at least August, laying off 470 of its 570 employees, as steel demand plummeted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. automakers Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler shuttered plants to help curb the spread of the virus.
With its recent purchase of steelmaker AK Steel, Cliffs is now supplying steel to “virtually all” U.S. automakers, Cliffs President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said. He said auto plants are reopening sooner than some expected.
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Cleveland-Cliffs, which owns several Minnesota and Michigan iron ore mines and taconite plants, will buy steelmaker AK Steel in a $1.1 billion stock deal, the companies announced Tuesday morning.
The move allows Cliffs to own AK Steel’s existing blast furnaces and electric arc furnaces, and supply the furnaces with its own iron ore pellets. Cliffs had long sold its pellets to other steelmakers.
That “vertically integrated steel company” model is used by U.S. Steel, which mines taconite and produces iron ore pellets at Keetac in Keewatin and Minntac in Mountain Iron that then supplies its blast furnaces throughout the U.S., and ArcelorMittal, which supplies its Indiana Harbor blast furnaces with pellets from its mines and plants at Hibtac in Hibbing and Minorca in Virginia.
A year after Lourenco Goncalves raged against analysts from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. chief’s acrimony has reversed 180 degrees.
“I love you, you are the best commodity desk I have ever seen in my life,” he said at a conference organized by Goldman on Wednesday. That’s a far cry from last October, when Goncalves told metals and mining equity analyst Matthew Korn “you can run but you can’t hide” and criticized the bank for being “wrong about iron ore prices, years in a row.”
Wednesday marked the first time the chief executive officer of the top U.S. iron ore producer publicly sat down with Korn since Goncalves questioned the analyst’s calculations for concluding in a note the company “modestly missed estimates.” In their latest interaction, they were cordial to each other.
It took massive output cuts from the world’s largest iron ore producer to get Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts and their biggest critic to agree on their outlook for the steelmaking ingredient.
Just two months ago, Cleveland-Cliffs Chief Executive Officer Lourenco Goncalves wasn’t shy about calling out Goldman analysts for their iron ore price forecast.
“Let me refresh your minds,” Goncalves said in a presentation at the bank’s metals conference in November. “Last year, Goldman Sachs’s Jeff Currie said that I don’t know where prices go — $65, three months later will be $60, then it will be $55 then $50. It went $65, $70, $75 then $70 then $75 so you are wrong, I was right.”
Cleveland Cliffs CEO bullish on future of state’s taconite, mining industries.
The CEO of Cleveland Cliffs has made one of the boldest statements yet on the resurgence of the taconite industry on Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Lourenco Goncalves — whose company runs Hibbing Taconite, United Taconite and Northshore Mining in Minnesota — said demand for iron ore and a rising price for the mineral has resulted in second-quarter profits quadrupling year over year. He said he expects to see the same results into next year.
“Going forward, we expect 2019 to be a continuation of a great 2018, based on the renewed strength of American manufacturing, the multiyear positive impact of the tax reform implemented in 2018 in the United States, and our strong position as the supplier of iron ore pellets within the Great Lakes region,” he said in a statement.
The City of Greater Sudbury and the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation, with support from key community partners including Wahnapitae First Nation and Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, are excited to deliver a compelling bid to host the proposed Noront Resources Ferrochrome Production Facility (FPF).
Earlier this month, Mayor Bigger and Chief Roque led a delegation to visit the Outokumpu Ferrochrome Production Facility in Tornio, Finland which uses the same closed furnace technology that Noront is proposing. The group gained key insights into the environmental safety and sustainability of the Tornio facility which has a 50 year record of excellence in these areas.
The delegation also met with municipal, public health and economic development officials to gain an all-encompassing understanding of best practices in welcoming a FPF and developing prosperous relationships.
