UPDATE 3-Cleveland-Cliffs to idle West Virginia tinplate plant, impacting 900 jobs
(Adds statement from USW union in paragraphs 6-7)
By Aatreyee Dasgupta
Feb 15 (Reuters) - Cleveland-Cliffs is indefinitely idling its tinplate plant in Weirton, West Virginia in April, impacting roughly 900 workers, the company said on Thursday, after a U.S. trade agency struck down dumping duties on food can steel imports.
The U.S. International Trade Commission earlier this month voted to overturn the Commerce Department's imposition of anti-dumping duties of 2.69% to 6.88% on tin mill steel after it found that the imports did not harm domestic steelmakers.
The decision dealt a blow to Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers (USW) union, which had petitioned last year for double- and triple-digit duties, alleging dumping below fair market value.
The ITC's decision makes "it impossible for us to viably produce tinplate," Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said on Thursday.
Tinplate is a metal sheet with tin plating used to make food and beverage cans and other industrial products such as electrical machinery parts.
"The current market for tin mill products has already been decimated by over 50% penetration of illegally dumped foreign tinplate," USW International President David McCall said.
"Now, with the idling of tinplate production in Weirton, unfair trade is one step closer to choking out our domestic industry entirely," McCall added.
Cleveland-Cliffs, the second-largest U.S. steelmaker, said it would issue a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice to the impacted employees. These employees will be provided relocation opportunities to work at other Cliffs' facilities and/or severance packages.
The company said it was maintaining its 2024 sales volume forecast of 16.5 million tons of overall steel products. (Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Anil D'Silva)
