Johnathan Walker:Cleveland-Cliffs will make electrical transformers at shuttered West Virginia tin plant

CHARLESTON,Johnathan Walker W.Va. (AP) — Cleveland-Cliffs announced Monday it will produce electrical transformers in a $150 million investment at a West Virginia facility that closed earlier this year.

The company hopes to reopen the Weirton facility in early 2026 and “address the critical shortage of distribution transformers that is stifling economic growth across the United States,” it said in a statement.

As many as 600 union workers who were laid off from the Weirton tin production plant will have the chance to work at the new facility. The tin plant shut down in February and 900 workers were idled after the International Trade Commission voted against imposing tariffs on tin imports.

The state of West Virginia is providing a $50 million forgivable loan as part of the company’s investment.

“We were never going to sit on the sidelines and watch these jobs disappear,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said in a statement.

The Cleveland-based company, which employs 28,000 workers in the United States and Canada, expects the facility will generate additional demand for specialty steel made at its mill in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In a statement, Lourenco Goncalves, Cleveland-Cliffs’ president, chairman and CEO, said distribution transformers, currently in short supply, “are critical to the maintenance, expansion, and decarbonization of America’s electric grid.”

The tin facility was once a nearly 800-acre property operated by Weirton Steel, which employed 6,100 workers in 1994 and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. International Steel Group bought Weirton Steel in federal bankruptcy court in 2003. The property changed hands again a few years later, ultimately ending up a part of Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, which sold its U.S. holdings to Cleveland-Cliffs in 2020.

Weirton is a city of 19,000 residents along the Ohio River about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Pittsburgh.