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Cliffs Plans for Production Curtailment at Empire Mine

12/06/2011 - Cliffs Natural Resources anticipates full-year 2012 production volume at its Empire Mine in Michigan to be about 2.7 million tons, down from 2011's full-year expected production volume of approximately 4.6 million tons, due to planned blast furnace maintenance at one of Cliffs' North American customer's facilities.

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. anticipates full-year 2012 production volume at its Empire Mine in Michigan to be about 2.7 million tons, down from 2011's full-year expected production volume of approximately 4.6 million tons. The decrease is the result of planned blast furnace maintenance in 2012 at one of Cliffs' North American customer's facilities.
 
The planned production curtailment may affect approximately 600 of the company's Michigan operations employees, beginning in the second quarter of 2012.
 
Cliffs indicated that 2012 production volumes within the company's other four U.S. Iron Ore mines will not be impacted by the customer's planned blast furnace maintenance outage in 2012. The company is maintaining its full-year 2012 expected sales and production volumes of 23 million tons for its U.S. Iron Ore business segment.
 
Terrence Mee, Cliffs' Senior Vice President, Global Iron Ore and Metallic Sales, said: "While the announcement of this production curtailment at Empire Mine will impact our Michigan Operations, we believe the curtailment will be temporary. We will continue to prudently manage our global production base as we work with customers to supply their blast furnace raw material requirements."
 
Cliffs Natural Resources, an international mining and natural resources company, is a major global iron ore producer and a significant producer of high- and low-volatile metallurgical coal. Cliffs' strategy is to continually achieve greater scale and diversification in the mining industry through a focus on serving the world's largest and fastest growing steel markets.
 
The company is organized through a global commercial group responsible for sales and delivery of Cliffs products and a global operations group responsible for the production of the minerals the Company markets. Cliffs operates iron ore and coal mines in North America and two iron ore mining complexes in Western Australia. The company also has a 45% economic interest in a coking and thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. In addition, Cliffs has a major chromite project, in the pre-feasibility stage of development, located in Ont., Canada.