Ohio-based iron ore and steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. has completed its acquisition of AK Steel Holding Corp., including the Butler plant.

The purchase integrates the country's largest producer of iron ore pellets with AK Steel's value-added steel and specialty manufactured parts for the automotive industry, Cleveland-Cliffs said Friday when it announced the completion of the sale.

The combined company will be led by Lourenco Goncalves, chairman, president and chief executive officer.

“This is a new era for Cleveland-Cliffs as a producer of differentiated, high quality iron ore, metallics and steel in North America. The new Cliffs will begin from a unique position of strength in our industry, with a dynamic combination of assets, including two efficient integrated blast furnace steel mills, two electric arc furnace plants, a new state-of-the-art HBI plant and several other highly technologically developed facilities,” Goncalves said in a statement. “We will be catering to a desirable customer base and primarily doing business in the United States, the most resilient manufacturing economy in the world.

“I am honored to be leading a company that is built on such a rich history, and now combines mining, pelletizing, direct-reduction, EAF steelmaking, BF/BOF steelmaking, highly technologically developed finishing mills and automated manufacturing of auto-parts.”

Goncalves concluded: “I am also very pleased to welcome the AK Steel employees and the unions representing the workforce throughout the country to the Cleveland-Cliffs family. From now on, we are a single, united and very strong team.”

Cleveland-Cliffs acquired $1.1 billion in issued and outstanding shares of AK Steel stock. The total sale price is $3 billion.

The sale comes a week after Goncalves said AK Steel plants in Butler and Zanesville, Ohio, would be shuttered unless a loophole is closed in the steel tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump.

He said the loophole has allowed imports of grain-oriented electrical steel products to enter the county without tariffs.

AK's Butler Works is the only producer of electrical steel in the United States.

AK Steel has 1,400 employees, 1,500 retiree families and 540 widows.

Some 200 trucks enter the plant every day, bringing supplies for the steelmaking process.