Cliffs Natural Resources Inc announced that it anticipates full year 2012 production volume at the Company's Empire mine in Michigan to be approximately 2.7 million tonnes, down from 2011's full year expected production volume of approximately 4.6 million tonnes.

The decrease is the result of planned blast furnace maintenance in 2012 at one of Cliffs' North American customer's facilities. This curtailment is not expected to impact the Company's previously announced sales and production volumes in its US Iron Ore business segment.

Cliffs indicated the planned production curtailment may affect approximately 600 of the Company's Michigan operations employees, beginning in the second quarter of 2012.

Mr Terrence Mee senior vice president global iron ore and metallic sales of Cliffs said that "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 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. However, production volumes are subject to change throughout the year based on customer demand. In addition, Cliffs is maintaining its full year 2012 expected sales and production volumes of 23 million tonnes for its US Iron Ore business segment.