In less than two years, Minnesota's total pellet production has plummeted to 18 million tons, hit by the U.S. and global economic downturn. With the closure of the pelletizing plant, the annual production capacity of the pelletizing plant is far less than 40 million tons.
There are six pelletizing plants in Northeast Minnesota. The raw materials are from 130 mile long iron ore strata. It takes about three and a half tons of iron ore to produce one ton of pelletizing.
In addition, there are still unexploited areas in Xishan vein, where there are oxidized (non-magnetic) iron ores, which are difficult to be used as pelletizing raw materials, high energy consumption and need flotation.
Each year, six pellet plants and the proposed essarsteel project in northeastern Minnesota report to the Minnesota Department of natural resources the reserves of iron ore that can be mined under the existing license. As of January 31, 2019, the seven iron ore projects reported a total of more than 4 billion tons of iron ore reserves.
Among them, mesabimetallics has 322 million tons; keetac has 1.2 billion tons; hibbingtaconite has 153 million tons; minntacmine has 674 million tons; United taconite has 814 million tons; minorcamine has 81 million tons; Northshore Mining Co. has 835 million tons.
The mining life of the state's mines is estimated to be 16 years for mesabimetallics, 78 years for keetac, 6 years for hibbingtaconite, 14 years for minntacmine, 64 years for United taconite, 10 years for minorcamine and 62 years for Northshore Mining Co.
Minorcamine project belongs to ArcelorMittal company; keetac project belongs to American steel company.
On the north bank, Cleveland cliffs is building a direct reduction pellet plant to feed its steel plant in Ohio.
