The cold-bond agglomeration process is increasingly being used as a means of recycling iron-rich steel plant byproducts back to the blast furnace. Even though an increasing number of plants are adopting this process, the use of cold-bonded agglomerates as burden material for the blast furnace is restricted to about 5% of the total burden material. This is because the cold-bonded agglomerates may lose their strength inside the furnace due to the dissociation of binder at high temperatures. This failure may result in the generation of fines, resulting in low bed permeability and higher dust content in stack gases. This paper describes the effects of temperature, degree of reduction, particle size of the raw material (d50), cement content, pellet-type and reduction under load on the compression strength and microstructure of cement-bonded briquettes comprising iron and steel plant byproducts.