Cleveland Cliffs Inc (CLF)

[kaivamei]

Sources: Cliffs' Nashwauk land deal a crippling blow to Chippewa
by Jerry Burnes
Mesabi Daily News, Dec 21, 2017

For much of the past 18 months since Essar Minnesota filed for bankruptcy, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves has expressed an intense interest in gaining control of the Nashwauk project and the world class iron ore it would mine.

It appears the Ohio-based company accomplished its goal earlier this month when Cliffs struck a deal to purchase and lease more than 3,700 acres of land and mineral rights from a private leaseholder within the project’s border.

An analysis of the parcels, confirmed by multiple sources with knowledge of the land deal and the project layout, show that Cliffs controls a majority of the planned mine pit and the mineral leases surrounding it.

The implications could cripple the efforts of Chippewa Capital Partners, which outbid Cliffs for the failed Essar project in a bankruptcy auction this spring, with plans to complete the pellet plant and build a value-added hot briquetted iron facility. Without access to the Cliffs-controlled minerals Chippewa could be sitting on $1 billion of half-built infrastructure, with few paths to meet production goals that are the center of the group’s financing efforts.

“No mine plan is possible anymore,” said one source....

“The purchase and leasing of private property holdings by Cliffs came as a complete surprise, and it presents significant additional challenges for the Chippewa Capital Partners project,” said Matt Swenson, deputy chief of staff for [Gov. Mark] Dayton, in a statement....

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Full text also posted by mecafe1 in near-bottom comment to this article (scroll way down to view):
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4131309-cleveland-cliffs-recent-debt-offerings-signs-growth