Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-05-09 Origin: Site
Cleveland-Cliffs has reportedly sent the Commonwealth worker adjustment and retraining notices in connection with layoffs at two Pennsylvania steel mills and one Illinois steel mill. Hundreds of layoffs and capacity reductions are underway at a consortium of electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mills in Stilton, Pennsylvania, and a basic oxygen converter (BOF) steel mill in Riverdale, Illinois. A downstream steel quench and anneal complex in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, is also affected.
The company operates a 300,000-ton per year electric arc furnace steelmaking plant in Stilton that produces railroad rails and two other end products, the report said. In Riverdale, the company's two converters have an annual capacity of 700,000 tons, according to the Cleveland-Cliffs website. The three plants will cease operations on or about June 30, 2025, potentially resulting in the loss of about 950 jobs.
Cleveland-Cliffs said the shutdowns at its plants in Stilton, Pennsylvania; Conshohocken; and Riverdale, Illinois, were due to “lack of demand and pricing issues,” and had nothing to do with President Donald Trump's tariffs.
The company said these temporary, uncertain shutdowns are a necessary response to lack of demand and pricing issues for the products produced at the affected facilities. These products are not part of Cleveland-Cliffs' core business, which is focused on flat products. At the same time, the company emphasized that overall production levels for flat products will not change.
This is not the first time the company has taken such action in 2025. In March, it suspended steel production at its Dearborn, Michigan, plant due to weak demand from the automotive industry, which resulted in about 600 people losing their jobs. The company also announced in April that it was cutting its mining operations in Minnesota, which would affect another 630 employees.
Cleveland-Cliffs' 2024 external steel sales decreased 5% year-over-year to 15.6 million short tons. Of the total, 36% were hot rolled products, 29% were coated, 16% were cold rolled, 5% were plate, 3% were stainless steel and electrical, and 11% were other products, including slabs and rails. The company's full-year steel production revenues amounted to $18.5 billion, with direct customers in the automotive industry accounting for about $5.6 billion, or 30 percent, of sales.
Cleveland-Cliffs said it believes it will be able to resume steel production in Dearborn once President Trump's policies take full effect and auto production returns to the country. Cleveland-Cliffs lost $700 million in 2024, according to its annual report, and president and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said challenges last year included “a decline in domestic automobile production and excessive steel imports from abroad.”
Lourenco Goncalves stated that the Company's 2024 results were the result of the worst steel demand environment since 2010 (excluding the New Crown Epidemic).For the first time in 2024, sales of imported automobiles in the U.S. exceeded sales of vehicles produced domestically in the U.S. The Company's 2024 results were the result of the worst steel demand environment since 2010, excluding the New Crown Epidemic. The company has been severely impacted by declining domestic auto production and unsustainably low steel prices due to excessive steel imports from abroad. Since Jan. 20, President Trump has made it clear that he is properly enforcing U.S. trade laws and implementing a supportive industrial policy that prioritizes U.S. manufacturing, he said. This should benefit Cleveland-Cliffs more than other companies.
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