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The bit of information I found most interesting in regards to the planned shutdown of #4 blast furnace at Indiana Harbor is the mention that Cliffs is adding hot-briquetted iron, presumably from the plant in Toledo, to the burden they are charging #7 with. The HBI from Toledo was originally supposed...

Regarding how long current blast furnaces may last, there are a few relatively new blast furnaces in operation. C-Furnace at Cliffs Dearborn was built in 2007 (replacing an older furnace with the same name). #14 furnace at US Steel Gary Works was a complete rebuild/replacement of #13 furnace from th...

I too have wondered why less ships seem to spend the winters in the Twin Ports in recent years than in years past, and while I have no inside information as to why a company chooses to lay up a vessel one place over another (excluding the need for dry docking which limits the choices somewhat), my m...

It wasn't a statement, but a serious question. If an individual had the money to buy the fleet, would CN be willing to sell to say an 18 year old kid, or would it have to be someone in the industry that meets certain requirements beyond the money? Just curious. As far as I am aware, the only requir...

As to how cargo could be distributed through the hold from a single point, perhaps there will be some kind of conveyor tripper system installed just under the spar deck that will allow distribution of the cargo fore and aft from that midship "dog house", assuming that's what that structure...

I believe that "Koch" refers to Koch Industries which owns Flint Hills Resources which operates several oil refineries I know that at least some of which produce Petroleum Coke as a byproduct. Knowing that SMET has shipped petroleum coke in the past I have been assuming that Koch = Flint H...

I've watched that channel for some time and can only figure that there must be some kind of order in what looks to me to be complete chaos that in some way makes sense to the people on the boats. Local knowledge and all that. There is another youtube channel of boats from the area, I assume this is ...

At the very least I would expect to see the ArcelorMittal logo coming off the stacks of the Central Marine boats this winter (unless Mittal retains some kind of interest in them).

DCN

Given this is a corporate press release the content and language used, which only paints a rosy picture of the future, is unsurprising. The tagline might be "Cleveland-Cliffs is coming to the rescue" but I would very much expect to see the status quo remain the name of the game in the mill...

First load of pellets was delivered mid-November 2019. The fact that here we are, nearly a year later, and none of those pellets have been used yet, shows how much Covid has delayed things. At least they know their pellet stacker is in working order.

DCN

I don't think it is operational yet. I live in northwest Ohio and haven't seen any mention of it being up and running anyway. The last I heard of a potential start up time was when the resumption of construction was announced after lock-down and an estimate of "winter 2020" for startup was...

It mainly has to do with what railroad serves the taconite plant as to where the ore is shipped from. BNSF railroad owns the docks in Superior and must service the mines in Hibbing and Keewatin. It is probably cheaper for the producer/customer to move this ore entirely on BNSF assets even though it ...

There are actually a few more integrated mills outside of the Great Lakes region. U.S. Steel, besides the aforementioned Edgar Thomson Works (part of the larger Mon Valley Works) around Pittsburgh, PA, has the Granite City Works in Granite City, IL (across the Mississippi River from St. Louis). Whil...

I wonder if the minimill steel producers, the target consumers of the new Cliffs hot briquette iron plant in Toledo, will be willing to buy their raw materials from a company that is now a major competitor of theirs, or if Cliffs will now just consume all the product themselves once any existing con...

I have been interpreting that phrase, along with pictures and video of the incident, to mean that the explosion and fire was the result of a failure in one of the blast furnaces stoves instead of the blast furnace itself. The dome part probably indicates it occurred near the top of the stove as they...

I think the Pathfinder originally come out of her conversion with an unloading arrangement where they needed to use loaders to clean her out, but was converted to a more traditional sloped hold arrangement after a year. I seem to recall comments at the time describing her belt setup as if the unload...

The iron content of taconite pellets is an iron oxide, usually in the form of the mineral Hematite (Fe2O3). This is a stable condition for iron, most hematite that is mined is literally billions of years old and the hematite in a taconite pellet will still be hematite a billion years from now if lef...

I believe Bowling Green State University has some of American Shipbuilding's records in their Historical Collections of the Great Lakes archive. Here's the archive website as a place to start:

https://www.bgsu.edu/library/cac/collections/hcgl.html

DCN

If seems as if people here as making the assumption that if ASC is for sale that means there are no contracts or no cargo for the vessels to haul, and I very much doubt that is the case. If ASC is sold to a Canadian fleet it would be a very short sighted move to reflag the majority of ASC's vessels ...

Ashland did received their pellets via Toledo and I believe that AK Steel's Middletown Works (just north of Cincinnati) still does. When I lived in Ashland I was acquainted with the head of the rail operations for the Ashland Works and had the opportunity to talk to him about the operations at the m...