Cliffs Natural Resources

http://www.virginiamn.com/

COMPANY CELEBRATES MILESTONE AND HISTORY ON THE IRON RANGE: NOW NORTH AMERICA’S LARGEST IRON ORE PRODUCER

Founded by 11 men from Cleveland in 1847, Cliffs Natural Resources is now known as North America’s largest producer of iron ore pellets. Celebrating 170 years as a company in 2017, Cliffs has been independent for all of the company’s long history and has a very positive outlook for this year, as well.

“The significance of this milestone cannot be over-emphasized. How many U.S. companies can state that they have been instrumental in building and shaping our society since 1847? Not many,’’ said Lourenco Goncalves, chairman, president and CEO of Cliffs.

Cliffs, which has weathered the ups and downs of the industry and also world events, now has Minnesota operations at United Taconite (Eveleth), Hibbing Taconite, and Northshore Mining in Silver Bay.

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http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Cliffs Natural Resources, the nation’s largest supplier of taconite iron ore, rode the recovering domestic steel industry back to profitability in 2016, posting a net income of $199 million compared to a net loss of $748 million in 2015.

The Cleveland-based company on Thursday announced its revenues were $754 million last year, up 58 percent over a crippling 2015.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, Cliffs recorded a net income of $81 million, up from a net loss of $58 million for the last quarter the year before, according to the company’s quarterly report issued Thursday.

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Stable steel consumption has contributed to a recent rebound in iron ore prices, according to Cliffs Natural Resources CEO Lourenco Goncalves.

He presented Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Global Metals and Mining Conference in New York, where he told the investors that demand, not the market, is driving prices. A constant domestic demand around 120 million tons is behind Goncalves projecting a $60 per ton price in 2017. “Things have been playing out the way we expected,” he said. “Iron ore is a commodity that can be controlled. Market control is not accurate.”

The biggest variable in the U.S. market for demand lately is illegally imported steel, a story that is old hat for mining companies across the region. Steel companies answered the question of how much imported steel was absorbed into the supply, Goncalves said, with four trade cases that led to high tariffs and the weeding out of foreign stock.

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https://www.mprnews.org/

After a year of layoffs and mine closures in northeast Minnesota that occurred while the U.S. steel industry grappled with a historic downturn, the Iron Range celebrated a piece of good news Thursday. Gov. Mark Dayton and other state leaders were on hand as Cliffs Natural Resources broke ground on a $65 million expansion at its United Taconite plant in Forbes.

The upgrades will allow Cliffs to produce a new specialty iron ore pellet it calls the “Mustang” pellet, which will supply North America’s largest steel blast furnace at the Indiana Harbor facility outside Chicago, operated by the steelmaker Arcelor Mittal.

In May, Cliffs announced a new 10-year supply contract with Arcelor Mittal. The new pellet, which will begin production in March 2017, replaces a pellet produced at the Empire Mine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which Cliffs closed earlier this month when the mine ran out of ore.

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http://www.startribune.com/

CEO says firm would build “direct- reduced iron” plant; Essar has vowed to fight its ouster in court.

The CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. says that if his mining company gets control of the newly bankrupt Essar Steel site in Nashwauk, Minn., it would build the first of what could be several “direct-reduced iron” plants — an advancement for Minnesota’s iron ore industry.

Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of Cleveland-based Cliffs, made the remarks Tuesday at a public meeting at the Nashwauk Township Community Center along with Gov. Mark Dayton. Cliffs has talked before about building a direct-reduced iron plant in Minnesota, but Tuesday marked the company’s most detailed ­comments.

Last week, Dayton terminated Essar Steel Minnesota’s mineral leases after the steelmaker failed to pay $66 million due the state for the company’s long-stalled $1.9 billion taconite mine in Nashwauk. That prompted Essar, an arm of India-based conglomerate Essar Global, to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware.

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http://www.wsj.com/

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. said it plans to restart its United Taconite mining operation in Minnesota during August, two months earlier than recently expected.

The U.S.’s biggest iron-ore miner cited a contract to supply the majority of U.S. Steel Canada’s iron-ore pellet requirement for the third and fourth quarters, which also spurred Cliffs to raise its sales volume and production guidance for 2016.

The moves come after Cliffs on May 31 announced it had reached a 10-year agreement to supply steel giant ArcelorMittal with iron-ore pellets, which lifted Cliffs stock 39% that day.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., the biggest U.S. iron-ore miner, jumped the most in more than seven years after first-quarter earnings exceeded estimates and the company announced supply-contract renewals with steelmakers.

Cliffs rose 25 percent to $5.39 at 4 p.m. in New York, the biggest gain since November 2008. The closing price was the highest since June. The Cleveland-based company’s shares have more than tripled this year as commodities including iron ore rallied.

Cliffs cut its cash production costs by more than a quarter in the U.S. and Asia, and Chief Executive Officer Lourenco Goncalves said in a statement that “consistent signs of a real recovery” in the domestic steel market are helping bolster orders at clients. The company boosted its capital spending forecast as it develops a new iron-ore pellet with ArcelorMittal, and reached a supply agreement with U.S. Steel Canada.

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http://www.cleveland.com/

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Investors who still own stock in Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources face another round of bad news.

Their stock lost more than 12 percent of value Tuesday, closing at just $2.38 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, after two investors who previously bought unsecured bonds in the company filed a class action lawsuit.

The complaint, filed in a federal court in New York, alleges that Cliffs, still the nation’s larges iron ore mining company, gave big institutional bondholders and banks an opportunity to exchange their unsecured Cliffs notes for new unconditionally guaranteed notes that pay an 8 percent rate of interest and come due in 2020.

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http://www.wsj.com/

The U.S.’s biggest iron ore miner Monday said it would restart a key mine in Minnesota, a positive sign for the battered U.S. steel industry following a small uptick in prices and new import tariffs on foreign steel.

Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. said it would resume production of iron ore pellets at its Northshore operations, which employ 540 workers, by May 15.

The mine, which was idled in December, was one of many industrial facilities in the U.S. to fall prey last year to a painful downtown in the industrial commodities sector, driven by a slowdown in Chinese demand, a collapse of energy prices and the stronger dollar. Steel prices in the U.S. fell over 30% on the year. Big steelmakers laid off thousands of workers, closed plants and posted billions of dollars in losses.

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