Cliffs Natural Resources Inc announced that it has increased its ownership of Spider Resources Inc to 85% after taking up and paying for an additional 22.2 million Spider shares validly tendered to its offer that expired on July 26th 2010.

Cliffs intends to precede with a going private amalgamation transaction to acquire the remaining shares of Spider according to the provisions of the applicable corporate and securities laws. Cliffs expects that this transaction will be completed in the Q4 of 2010.

According to the latest information from Spider, it has a total of 660,683,773 shares outstanding, calculated on a fully diluted basis. Cliffs currently owns 561,283,742 shares, up from 539,119,126 shares or approximately 82% on July 16th 2010. The price under the expired Offer was CAD USD 0.19 per Spider share, implying a total equity value for Spider of CAD 125.5 million.