Near-record iron ore traffic fueling Cleveland-Cliffs’ East Toledo processing plant helped boost the Port of Toledo’s total cargo tonnage to a 2.24 percent increase during the 2022 shipping season compared with the year before, year-end Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority statistics show.
Coal and grain shipments also increased during the port’s 2022 shipping season, while the petroleum/liquid bulk, dry bulk, and general cargo categories were down for the year.
Joe Cappel, the port authority’s vice president for business development, said he could not disclose how much of the 5,576,540 tons of taconite pellets -- a minimally processed form of iron ore -- that crossed Toledo’s docks last year went to Cliffs as opposed to being loaded on trains bound for AK Steel in Middletown, Ohio. The Middletown mill, now also owned by Cleveland-Cliffs, is the other regular destination for ore delivered to Toledo.
But that tonnage represents a 53 percent increase over Toledo’s iron ore traffic in 2019, the last year before the Cliffs plant began operating, and an even higher increase over the number from 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic curbed industrial activity.
The Toledo port’s iron ore record, of 5.6 million tons, was set in 1978, when ore brought to Toledo was taken by trains to several major steel mills. The hot-briquetted iron that Cliffs makes at its local plant is a feedstock for its mills’ blast furnaces, basic-oxygen furnaces, and electric-arc furnaces.
Last year “was the first full year that Cliffs was in full operation,” which is why inbound ore was up by just shy of 250,000 tons compared with 2021, Mr. Cappel said.
Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment.
The port’s total of 11,684,394 tons of cargo was its highest since 2007, the port authority said, and the 277,062 tons of aluminum that came in from Canada also set a record even as other forms of general cargo dipped slightly.
Aluminum first appeared as a port cargo in 2004 and was boosted when the port authority received London Metal Exchange status as a delivery point. Aluminum shipped through Toledo is consumed primarily by the automotive and appliance industries and travels as far inland as Kentucky and Pennsylvania, Mr. Cappel said.
“That’s been kind of a fun commodity to watch as it has grown in Toledo,” he said, noting that aluminum arrives in two forms -- sows and ingots -- and is in growing demand for such uses as engine blocks because it is lighter than steel.
“Aluminum is a metal they’re trying to use more and more,” Mr. Cappel said.
Grain, at 1,471,764 tons, had the highest-percentage increase (14.79 percent), while petroleum and liquid bulk was down the most: 36.37 percent to 188,362 tons. Mr. Cappel said BP/Husky’s problems at its Oregon refinery caused that decline.
The dry bulk sector’s 26.2 percent drop, meanwhile, was largely attributable to steep drop in inbound rock salt.
“We had a mild winter. There’s variables like that,” Mr. Cappel said.
Having a large, steady consumer of a waterborne commodity, like the Cliffs plant, provides Toledo’s port with a solid cargo baseline, he said.
“That’s the difference from a cargo you get here or there,” the port vice president said. “This is a plant that is going to have a need for continuing transportation. We can attract major projects because we have access to the modes that we do.”
First Published February 16, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
