Cleveland Cliffs held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its expansion at Northshore Mining in Silver Bay, Minnesota, in early August. The company is celebrating the startup of the new production equipment, including supporting infrastructure, which was completed on schedule. The $100 million investment included upgrading the concentrator building, a new scavenger building, new conveyor systems, a limestone tank and a steam generating plant to support large-scale commercial production of DR-grade pellets.
Cleveland-Cliffs broke ground for the project in March 2018, and the execution of the project concluded after nearly 500,000 labor hours of work. The project employed 150 people at peak construction, which included management, craft and labor.
Northshore Mining is now the only U.S.-based iron ore processing facility to produce low silica DR-grade pellets. The Northshore operation is producing DR-grade pellet feedstock inventory for Cliffs’ hot briquetted iron plant in Toledo, Ohio, which will be commissioned in mid-2020.
