Blog

Mar 10, 2023

Cleveland

Steel rolls along the line at the 80” Hot Strip Mill at Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana

Steel rolls along the line at the 80" Hot Strip Mill at Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago on Monday afternoon.

A bar of steel makes its way through the 80" hot strip mill at Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor on its way to becoming a coil of steel.

The heat treat line at Burns Harbor is shown.

Cleveland-Cliffs is again raising hot-rolled steel prices in a sign of stronger demand in the marketplace.

Steel prices have been on the upswing again after falling last year from the record highs they summited to in 2021.

Cleveland-Cliffs, one of the Region's largest employers, has hiked prices five times so far this year.

The Cleveland-based steelmaker, which has operations in East Chicago, Burns Harbor, Gary, Riverdale and New Carlisle, is again increasing the price of hot-rolled steel by $100 a ton, effective immediately.

It's now charging at least $1,300 per net ton for its spot market base price for all hot-rolled steel products, which are produced in great volume at the integrated steel mills along the Lake Michigan shoreline in the Calumet Region.

The company has increased hot-rolled, cold-rolled and coated steel product prices this year, charging as much as $400 more than it did at the beginning of 2023.

Cleveland-Cliffs, which runs a plate heat treat facility at its Burns Harbor Works steel mill and another plate operation inside the gates of U.S. Steel's Gary Works mill in Gary, also recently raised the base price of steel plate by $60 a ton. The plate goes into Navy warships and other military applications.

Cleveland-Cliffs was a longtime mine operator dating back to 1847 that long shipped boatloads of iron ore to Northwest Indiana's lakefront steel mills via ore freighters on Lake Michigan. It recently acquired its largest customers, ArcelorMittal USA and AK Steel in Ohio, making it the largest flat-rolled steel producer in the United States in the largest round of consolidation that's reshaped the domestic steel industry.

The vertically integrated steelmaker handles mining, direct reduced iron, ferrous scrap, primary steelmaking, finishing, stamping, tooling and tubing, taking iron ore in upper Minnesota and Michigan on a journey of hundreds of miles all the way through the steelmaking process to become the finished steel products that go into cars, appliances and countless other end uses. Cleveland-Cliffs is now the largest supplier of steel to North America's automotive industry, a core focus of its business.

The company employs more than 27,000 people, including more than 7,500 in Northwest Indiana.

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Business Reporter

Region native Joseph S. Pete is a Lisagor Award-winning business reporter who covers steel, industry, unions, the ports, retail, banking and more. The Indiana University grad has been with The Times of Northwest Indiana since 2013.

The Northwest Indiana Chapter of the Red Cross celebrated the 80th anniversary of Red Cross Month in March.