Low-grade hematitic cherty iron formation provided the raw material for concentrated iron ore pellets. As the pit deepened, a primary crusher was installed in the three-hundred-foot high wall at the bottom of the pit. After drilling and blasting on the various benches, trucks carried the ore to the crusher, which reduced it to chunks less than six inches in size. A two-thousand-eight-hundred-fourteen-foot conveyor then lifted the ore six-hundred-forty-seven feet to the processing plant. There the ore was ground to a fine powder and put through flotation and filtration processes that raised the iron content to sixty-five percent. Marble-sized pellets were then produced in revolving drums and hardened in revolving kilns at two thousand four hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit.