Layoffs coming to Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill in Conshohocken, as it closes indefinitely

Cleveland-Cliffs, the second-largest U.S. steelmaker, will idle two plants in Pennsylvania and one in Illinois this summer due to weak demand and low prices.

The “temporary, indefinite” closures at the end of June include its Conshohocken plate-finishing works, which employs around 110, the company said Tuesday. The plant is located just outside the borough in Plymouth Township.

Other closures include its rail mill in Steelton, near Harrisburg, where 559 are to be laid off, and a hot-rolling mill in Riverdale, Ill., near its East Chicago, Ind., steel complex, where around 281 are slated for layoffs, the company has told state officials .

“The indefinite idling of these facilities is not due to steel tariffs,” Cleveland-Cliffs spokesperson Patricia Persico said in a statement.

The Conshohocken plant processes heavy steel plates produced for high-rise construction, shipbuilders, and other customers at Cleveland-Cliffs’ larger plant and lab in Coatesville, the former Lukens steel company, which will not be affected.

The plants that will idle were inherited in acquisitions of smaller steelmakers and are not part of Cliffs’ “core business focus” on making and selling flat-rolled steel from its larger mills, Persico said.

Lourenco Goncalves, Cleveland-Cliffs’ president, has said he supports President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs on imported steel and predicts the import taxes will eventually generate more jobs in the U.S. steelmaking industry.

Goncalves visited the Coatesville plant last fall with United Steelworkers leaders and Biden administration officials, making a case for more protection from unfair foreign competition. The United States has found that China and other nations have “dumped” subsidized steel at prices below cost to win market share in the United States, damaging domestic producers.

Combined with layoffs announced in March at two Cleveland-Cliffs iron mines in Minnesota and an automotive-steel plant in Dearborn, Mich., more than 2,000 steelworkers will be left unemployed by the company’s cuts.

Sales fell and the company lost money last year due to a drop in orders, including from the U.S. automotive industry, and the related drop in steel prices, the company says. It will review first-quarter 2025 earnings in a conference call May 8.

With sales of $19 billion last year, Cleveland-Cliffs is the second-largest U.S. steelmaker after Nucor, and the largest with a mostly union production workforce.

The company has sought to acquire smaller rival U.S. Steel, based in Pittsburgh, whose planned sale to Nippon Steel of Japan was blocked by the Biden administration.

The Conshohocken plant was run by the locally based Alan Wood Steel company from 1832 to 1977. Besides the plant, the company owned iron mines in New Jersey, a railroad to King of Prussia, metal cabinet factories, and other facilities, employing thousands.

Since the 1977 sale, the plant has had a succession of out-of-town steel company owners. Cleveland-Cliffs acquired it and plants in Steelton, Coatesville, and Butler, Pa., among other U.S. cities, in its 2020 purchase of U.S. steel mills from global steel giant ArcelorMittal.

The Steelton mill, one of just three railroad-rail-making plants in the U.S., has long been a dominant employer in that industrial community on the Susquehanna.

Once a bustling factory town where workers made tires, machinery, processed foods and many other products, Conshohocken has evolved as a corporate center, home to drug distribution giant Cencora, business software maker Boomi, and the Quaker Houghton chemical company. Much of the former industrial area along the Schuylkill has been redeveloped with apartment buildings and offices.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information on layoff totals.