Bottomless Pit

Beneath the forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula lie vast iron deposits that have long resisted ore-hungry steelmen. The ore is jasper, a diamond-hard rock that blunts ordinary drills, is too low in iron content (about 33%) for conventional refining methods. Five years ago Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., with Ford Motor Co., set up pilot operations to mine and process* jasper by a new method. Last week Cleveland-Cliffs and Inland Steel Co. announced that they will build, near Marquette, Mich., the nation's first big jasper-mining and processing project. At peak production the Marquette plants will grind some 6,000,000 tons of jasper yearly, convert it into 3,000,000 tons of walnut-sized pellets that contain 60% iron.

With the nation scraping the bottom of its high-grade iron deposits and steel capacity due to rise 60% (to 216 million tons yearly) by 1980, the development of such low-grade ores as jasper and its cousin, taconite, has become one of the fastest-growing branches of the booming steel industry. Items:

P: Reserve Mining Co., owned by Republic Steel and Armco, will have its 3,750,000-ton taconite processing project at Babbitt and Silver Bay, Minn. in full production by May.

P: Erie Mining Co., jointly owned by Bethlehem, Youngstown and two smaller companies, has operated a pilot taconite plant near Aurora, Minn, since 1948, is building a $300 million plant that will start up in 1957, will have a 7,500,000-ton annual capacity.

P: U.S. Steel has two small Minnesota taconite plants at Mountain Iron and Virginia, Minn, that ship 500,000 tons yearly, is planning a huge new plant near by to boost annual production to more than 10 million tons.

Though processing low-grade ore costs up to $30 per ton, the even quality of the pellets hikes blast-furnace output as much as 20%, and produces better pig iron. An even bigger advantage of low-grade iron ore is its large supply. Only five years ago steelmen were predicting that some of the nation's high-grade ore deposits would be mined out by 1970. By using its low-grade ore, the U.S. should have plenty of ore for another several hundred years.

* Jasper is blasted from the earth, crushed to powder, washed to rid it of some impurities, then mixed into a special oil solution that floats the fine particles of iron to the surface. They are concentrated into small pellets by centrifuge.

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