By Paul J. Gough – Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.’s idled steel plants in Conshohocken and Steelton are garnering interest from both other manufacturers and also data center developers.
The Cleveland-based steelmaker said there’s been “inbound interest” in those two eastern Pennsylvania factories as well as a strip mill, Riverdale, in Illinois. It wasn’t clear whether that interest included companies that would buy the factories and return them to work.
Cleveland Cliffs fully idled the Steelton rail-steel plant and its Conshohocken plate finishing facility due to financial losses, at the same time it also said it wouldn’t be moving forward with a transformer production plant in Weirton, West Virginia. The Riverdale idling is expected to save $90 million a year, while Conshohocken saves $45 million a year and Steelton $30 million.
“These sites, particularly Riverdale, Steelton, and Conshohocken, are all uniquely positioned geographically and have what data center developers are looking for, access to power and water with the infrastructure already in place,” CFO Celso Goncalves said. “While these properties are idled, if opportunities don’t arise that justify restarting, they have good value and the amount of interest we have received in these properties so far is reflective of this.”
Data centers have proliferated with the rise in artificial intelligence. Their often-sprawling footprints are used to process and store mass quantities of data for major tech companies like Amazon, Google Cloud and Oracle. Several multibillion-dollar projects are being planned across Pennsylvania.
Full story: http://tiny.cc/f31q001
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