The US War Department has published a notice of a contract worth up to $400 million, which was awarded to the American Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Corp. for the supply of Grain Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES) in its daily contract announcement dated July 1, 2026. The five-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract was awarded through the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and has a completion date of September 8, 2030, with no option periods.
The award was awarded on a sole source basis as Cleveland-Cliffs is the only domestic producer of grain-oriented electrical steel. The contract covers up to 53,000 net tons of material over its term. The West Chester, Ohio-based company will supply steel for use by five military services, namely the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Space Force. Contract funding runs from FY 2025 through FY 2029.
Grain-oriented electrical steel is a specialized material designed to minimize alternating current energy loss, making it important for transformer and generator cores used in military equipment and the broader electrical grid. Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest producer of flat products in North America and the only domestic source of the product, producing the material at its plant in Butler, Pennsylvania. This single domestic source position reinforced the government's decision to abandon competitive bidding because, historically, the U.S.
