Cleveland-Cliffs Inc

This acquisition is combining North America’s largest producer of iron ore pellets, with a leading producer of innovative flat-rolled carbon, stainless and electrical steel products, to create a vertically integrated producer of value-added iron ore and steel products. The acquisition was completed in March 2020.

Cleveland-Cliffs celebrated its 170th year as a company in 2017. As part of the celebration, the Company announced it was dropping the Cliffs Natural Resources name and returning to its old brand name, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.

There were more than 3,000 companies listed on the NYSE in 2016. Cliffs was the best performing stock among all Metals and Mining companies in 2016.

Shareholders elected six new directors during its 2014 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, who appointed former Metals USA executive Lourenco Goncalves as chairman, president and CEO of Cliffs. The reconstituted Board moved to shift the company's strategic objectives from global diversification to a renewed focus on strengthening its U.S. iron ore business.

Lead director James Kirsch was elected nonexecutive chairperson in his stead. Gary Halverson, formerly interim chief operating officer of Barrick Gold Corporation Inc., was appointed president and chief operating officer in October 2013, and president and chief executive officer in February 2014.

The coal company, called PinnOak, mines coal in Alabama and West Virginia and once belonged to U.S. Steel. In line with its venture into coal, the company changed its name from Cleveland-Cliffs to Cliffs Natural Resources in October 2008.

Chairman and CEO John Brinzo commented on the company's future in a February 2004 American Metal Market article, claiming that "with solid steel demand and improved pricing, most integrated steel producers are operating their mills at high utilization rates. We anticipate the demand for iron ore will remain high and all of our operations are currently scheduled to run at or near capacity." He added, "We are excited about 2004. We are at a point where our actions and a much stronger steel industry are expected to improve profitability for Cliffs."

Cleveland-Cliffs, in a joint venture with Laiwu Steel Group of China, purchased the assets of bankrupt Eveleth Mines LLC and formed United Taconite.

In 2002, LTV Steel, a partner in the Empire Mine managed by CCI, closed and the Empire was idled for six months. . President George W. Bush enacted steel tariffs that helped domestically produced steel rebound.

Nearly one-third of Cleveland-Cliffs' customers had declared bankruptcy by 2001, including its largest customer, LTV Steel Mining Company. The company began buying up assets. It acquired LTV's holdings in 2001 and converted them into a new company, International Steel Group (ISG). Cleveland-Cliffs secured a 15-year agreement to be the sole supplier pellets to the new firm in 2002.

As Cleveland-Cliffs headed into the late 1990s, the company shored up strong profits and was buoyed by a strong U.S. manufacturing sector. The firm was reminded of just how cyclical the industry can be however, as ore prices fell and imports increased in 1999. As such, the company was forced to temporarily shut down three of its mines--Empire, Hibbing Taconite, and Tilden--in order to balance out inventory levels. At the same time, problems were brewing at the company's new hot briquetted iron (HBI) plant in Trinidad. Cleveland-Cliffs was not able to overcome these difficulties and eventually shut down the plant in 2002.

In the fall of 1994, Cliffs bolstered its top-ranking position with the acquisition of Cypress Amax Minerals Company's iron ore mine and power plant--Northshore Mining Company--in Minnesota for $66 million. The addition increased Cleveland-Cliffs annual production capacity by 69 percent, from 5.8 million tons to 9.8 million tons of standard pellets. The company netted $42.8 million on sales of $344.8 million that year, their highest levels for both figures since 1990. In 1995, the company launched a $6.1 million expansion project at Northshore Mining.

A second loss in 1986 brought the company perilously close to bankruptcy. By the end of 1987, Cleveland-Cliffs had $126 million in past due loans. As the company's stock declined, management instituted several anti-takeover measures, including a "poison pill" plan and "golden parachutes" that secured their own financial futures. The crisis and the board's reaction to it precipitated a battle with shareholders over the best way to restructure the company's debt. CEO M. Thomas Moore wanted to pay off the liability with the proceeds of a new stock issue, but dissident shareholders led by David Bolger, who held 6.8 percent of the company's stock, favored a more creative plan. According to a January 1988 Forbes article, Bolger proposed to "raise $144 million in new bank debt, toss in $221 million cash from the company treasury and the sale of a Michigan power plant, call in $53 million in preferred [stock] and make a hefty $168 million cash distribution to shareholders."

The periods following the recessions of 1974–75 and 1981–83 were harsh ones for the iron ore industry. Cleveland-Cliffs shrank its operations, closing the Mather B Mine and the Pioneer Pellet Plant and associated Ore Improvement Plant in 1979. The Humboldt Pellet Plant closed in 1981 and the Republic Mine was idled in 1981 and closed for good in 1996, when Cliffs began turning the associated tailings ponds into compensatory wetlands for its other properties. Over half of the Marquette Iron Range employees were laid off and, in 1984, Cleveland-Cliffs withdrew from the Great Lakes shipping industry.

Pannawonica is an iron-ore mining town located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, with a 200-kilometre (120 mi) rail line to processing facilities at Cape Lambert for which the residential township of Wickham was built. A pellet plant was built but ceased operation before 1980, following a sharp increase in the cost of diesel fuel.

A company history published in 1974 called this low point "William G. Mather's finest hour." It was at this desperate time that he established Cleveland-Cliffs' policy of sacrificing all but domestic iron ore reserves to keep the mining concern alive. Despite his efforts, Cleveland-Cliff's financial condition continued to deteriorate. In 1933, local banker Edward B. Greene, an in-law of the Wade family, replaced Mather as president, who assumed the position of chairman. Greene reduced Cleveland-Cliff's debt through sale of some timberlands and steel stocks and the 1935 divestment of Corrigan-McKinney to Republic Steel. The financial reorganization brought about the 1947 reunion of Cleveland-Cliffs and the practically purposeless Cliffs Corporation. Mather retired in 1952 and was replaced by Greene. The position of president was briefly filled by Alexander C. Brown.

Under Mather, Cleveland-Cliffs was a leader in the development of the classic-type lake freighter, a bulk-cargo vessel especially designed to carry Great Lakes commodities. The 618-foot-long William G. Mather, launched in 1925, is a surviving example of this ship type. For almost a century, the black-hulled Cleveland-Cliffs ships were familiar sights on the upper lakes.

The ever-growing capital requirements of mining made it an increasingly venturesome proposition in the early twentieth century. In order to distribute the risk, Cleveland-Cliffs formed partnerships with steel companies to own and operate mines. The company established its first joint venture of this type in 1903 when it leased the Negaunee Mine to a company it co-owned with Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Cleveland-Cliffs' customer relationships were often strengthened through the exchange of ore for stock and equity positions in steel companies.

The final decades of the 19th century were a period of business consolidation from the partnership-sized businesses of an earlier generation to a new type of business firm, the stock-market-traded corporation intent on maximizing market share. The former Cleveland Iron Mining Co. was a survivor of this shakeout, purchasing many of its competitors. One key merger in 1890, with Jeptha Wade's Cliffs Iron Company led the combined firm to change its name to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company.

Mather, who had started his career with Cleveland Iron Mining as a clerk in 1878, served as president for 42 years. Perhaps inspired by social reforms of the turn-of-the-century Progressive Era, the second-generation leader established a department that provided disability and death benefits to miners and their families, as well as educational assistance, a pension fund, and a worker safety program.

As the years went by and surface mines in the region were depleted, firms like Cleveland Iron Mining were forced to seek underground sources. Up to this time, mining was a fairly simple, but extremely labor-intensive, process. Below-ground mining necessitated the development of such specialized devices as power drills, hoisting and conveying machinery, pumps, and ventilation equipment. Cleveland Iron Mining in 1877 became one of the first firms to use these types of equipment to locate ore bodies. The company also pioneered the use of electricity at its mines, often establishing its own on-site hydroelectric and coal-fired generators. These one-time necessities grew into a profitable sideline in the early twentieth century.

The firm's earliest predecessor was the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, founded in 1847 and chartered as a company by Michigan in 1850. Samuel Mather and six Ohio-based associates had learned of rich iron-ore deposits recently discovered in the highlands of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Soon afterwards, the first Soo Locks opened in 1855, allowing iron ore to be shipped from Lake Superior to Lake Erie.