"We understand that it's possible to bring blast furnaces back to produce pig iron. But reality is always in the way. A blast furnace that has been idle for a long, long, long time has problems,” said Goncalves, speaking during the S&P Global Platts Steel Markets North America conference. The 14th annual conference, which began Tuesday, is being held in Chicago, Ill., USA.

Goncalves told attendees that such projects are infeasible because the lead times and the costs involved make them unworkable. Additionally, he said that such restarts wouldn’t make much strategic sense.

"I don’t see an integrated mill restarting a blast furnace just to support an EAF that would come and take market share."

Cleveland-Cliffs is building a hot briquetted iron plant in Toledo, Ohio, USA, and aims to produce 1.6 million tons annually for EAFs in the Great Lakes region. The plant faces potential competition from a joint venture between Republic Steel and ERP Iron Ore LLC, which together plan to relight Republic’s No. 4 blast furnace in Lorain, Ohio, and produce merchant pig iron.

The joint venture, called Lorain Pig Iron, is soliciting technical proposals to relight the furnace and is intending to begin production before the end of this year. The joint venture is targeting 1 million tons of production annually, but may increase that to more than 2 million tons through a potential restart of Republic’s No. 3 blast furnace in Lorain.