 | |
| Industry | Steel |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1912 |
| Headquarters | 1330 Burlington St E, |
| Parent | ArcelorMittal |
ArcelorMittal Dofasco is a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Dofasco is a standalone subsidiary of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest integrated steel producer.
Clifton and Frank A. Sherman founded Dominion Foundries and Steel in 1912, creating a giant that would bring prosperity and identity to the city of Hamilton, Ontario. [1] Dofasco was incorporated as Dominion Steel Castings Company Limited in 1912, becoming Dominion Foundries and Steel Company in 1917. [2] Sherman Mine opened in 1968 and closed in 1990. Its longtime nickname, "Dofasco," was adopted as its legal name in 1980. [2]
Frank H. Sherman (Frank A.'s son) introduced to Dofasco and North America in 1954 the method of steel production known as basic oxygen steelmaking (BOS), thus rendering former processes obsolete because, with respect to them, the same quantity of steel from a BOS process is manufactured in one-twelfth the time. [3] Basic oxygen steelmaking is superior to previous steelmaking methods because the oxygen pumped into the furnace limited impurities, primarily nitrogen, that previously had entered from the air used. [4]
Dofasco's head office in Hamilton was built in 1964 and was designed by Prack & Prack.
Dofasco owned and operated a number of subsidiaries, including National Steel Car, a Hamilton-based railway freight car manufacturer, from 1962 to 1994, and Algoma Steel, from 1988 to 1991, until union and financial difficulties ultimately forced Dofasco to divest the company.[ citation needed ]
In 1990, the world economy entered into recession. Dofasco lost $900 million in three years from 1991, in addition to the write-off of $700 million when it sold Algoma. [3] Dofasco was the owner of the Adams and Sherman iron ore mines in Northeastern Ontario until 1990 when Dofasco announced that they would be closing the mines. During the recession of the early 1990s, Dofasco made its first permanent layoffs since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Dofasco has won awards for being the "most sustainable manufacturing company" in North America. [5]
In January 2006, Luxembourg-based Arcelor, then the world's second-largest steel producer by volume, outbid rival German steel producer, ThyssenKrupp AG, to purchase Dofasco. Analysts cited the strengths of Dofasco, including its non-unionized workforce, strong automotive customer base, unique thin, high-strength steel product, and ownership of a Canadian ore mine. [6]
Dofasco's Canadian management initially didn't want to be taken over. [3] After Arcelor initially presented a hostile bid of $56 per share, ThyssenKrupp and Dofasco signalled their intentions to enter into a friendly merger. Under that plan, Dofasco would have retained its employee profit-sharing plan and placed in charge of all of ThyssenKrupp's North American operations. [6] Arcelor raised its offer significantly, causing ThyssenKrupp to pull out, as further bidding would have downgraded its credit rating. Dofasco paid ThyssenKrupp a breakup fee of $215 million. Dofasco's board recommended the latest Arcelor offer of $71 per share in cash, worth an estimated $5.5 billion. While the breakup fee was criticized by some as excessive, most analysts otherwise praised President and CEO Donald A. Pether and the board of directors for their successful handling of the bidding situation. [7]
Arcelor was itself three months later taken over by the world's largest steel producer, Mittal. [3] However, in an effort to prevent Dofasco from falling into ThyssenKrupp's hands, Arcelor management locked Dofasco into an independent trust based in the Netherlands. Dofasco is now part of the combined ArcelorMittal and has been integrated into their international operations. [8]
Unlike rival Stelco, Dofasco is not unionized. As a result, Dofasco has avoided many of the strikes and work stoppages which have plagued its cross-town rival. Some investors complained that the profits should have been distributed to shareholders as a special dividend rather than giving workers larger bonuses, which was a factor in the underperforming stock price despite strong results. As of January 1, 2013, Dofasco (now a standalone subsidiary) reduced the benefits for both drug and dental and changed to a defined contribution pension plan for many of its employees. [6] [9]
While several unsuccessful attempts have been made to organize by the United Steelworkers of America, union negotiations at Stelco may have influenced wages and benefits at Dofasco.
In 2007, Dofasco was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, the only steelmaker to receive this honour. The most recent win came in 2020. [10]
Since 1937, Dofasco has annually held a large Christmas party, typically featuring 30,000 guests and a 30-foot (9 m) tree. During the early years, the party was held in one of the large mill buildings on Gage Ave. From 1993 to 2009, the party was held at Copps Coliseum. [11] In 2010, the company moved the party to the company-owned recreation park.
Steelmaking in Canada has long been associated with pollution. For example, in 1989, Dofasco and Stelco were listed among the "dirty dozen" polluters in Ontario:
"For many years Steeltown's two giants pumped liquid discharges that contained cyanide, phosphorus, ammonia, solvents and phenols straight into Hamilton Harbour.... But both firms have been cleaning up to meet the terms of a pollution control order imposed on them by Queen's Park [and] the harbour is getting cleaner and supports 58 known species of fish." [12]
In 2014, the company pleaded guilty to violating air quality standards in 2012 and paid violation and victim surcharge fines of approximately half a million dollars. [13] In 2015, there was an accidental release of a large plume of iron oxide dust at the plant due to an instrument failure [14] and Dofasco has been working to address air pollution [15]
Since 1970, the company has used the same corporate slogan—"Our product is steel. Our strength is people."—to create what Marketing Magazine has called "one of the most clearly defined corporate images in the country." The slogan was created by Hamilton-based Kelly Advertising, which has been the company's advertising agency since 1927. [16] The slogan can also be seen as recognizing the importance of its workforce, as the company says it has a good relationship with its employees. For a short time, the slogan contained a third line: "Our home is Hamilton." [17]
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 569,353, and its census metropolitan area, which encompasses Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 785,184. The city is situated approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) southwest of Toronto in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).
Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel.
Arcelor S.A. was the world's largest steel producer in terms of turnover and the second largest in terms of steel output, with a turnover of €30.2 billion and shipments of 45 million metric tons of steel in 2004. The company was created in 2002 by a merger of the former companies Aceralia (Spain), Usinor (France) and Arbed (Luxembourg). Arcelor is now part of ArcelorMittal after a takeover by Mittal Steel in 2006.
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Stelco Holdings Inc. is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 by the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years until it filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and was bought by U.S. Steel. In 2016, the company was sold to Bedrock Industries of the United States, which took the company public. The company made its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Nov. 3, 2017.
ThyssenKrupp AG is a German industrial engineering and steel production multinational conglomerate. It resulted from the 1999 merger of Thyssen AG and Krupp and has its operational headquarters in Duisburg and Essen. The company says that it is one of the largest steel producers in the world, and it was ranked tenth-largest worldwide by revenue in 2015. It is divided into 670 subsidiaries worldwide. The largest shareholders are the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation and Cevian Capital. ThyssenKrupp's products range from machines and industrial services to high-speed trains, elevators, and shipbuilding. The subsidiary ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems also manufactures frigates, corvettes, and submarines for the German and foreign navies.
ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourg-based multinational steel manufacturing corporation headquartered in Luxembourg City. It was formed in 2006 from the takeover and merger of Arcelor by Indian-owned Mittal Steel. ArcelorMittal is the second largest steel producer in the world, with an annual crude steel production of 78 million metric tonnes as of 2022. It is ranked 197th in the 2022 Fortune Global 500 ranking of the world's largest corporations. It employs around 154,000 people and its market capital is $20 billion. The total value of company assets is estimated to be around $94 billion.
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Hamilton, Ontario is a port city in Canada.
This article describes the Economic History of Hamilton, Ontario.
Burlington Street is a partially at grade and elevated roadway in Hamilton, Ontario, stretching along the south shore of Hamilton Harbour in Lake Ontario. Burlington Street has four different statuses along the route. In its western terminus, it is a collector route ending at Bay Street North. Upon the intersection at Wellington Street, the road becomes an arterial route with four lanes. The Street ends at Parkdale Avenue. On October 14, 2015, city council approved the renaming of the upper portion of Burlington Street from 165 meters east of Ottawa St to the QEW to Nikola Tesla Boulevard.
Sherman Avenue is a collector road in the lower portion of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It begins at the Niagara Escarpment just south of Cumberland Avenue and is a one-way street bisecting the industrialized northern neighbourhoods of the city. It ends at Ship Street — the site of Steel Company of Canada (Stelco).
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The Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority (HOPA) is a port authority that controls ports in the cities of Hamilton and Oshawa in the Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, Canada. It was created in 2019 when the Hamilton Port Authority and the Oshawa Port Authority were merged by the Government of Canada. The amalgamated port authority replaced the Oshawa Port Authority created in 2012 and the Hamilton Port Authority which succeeded the Hamilton Harbour Commission in 2001. The port of Hamilton, located in Hamilton Harbour, is Ontario's largest and among the busiest ports in Canada. Both ports are located on opposite ends of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
Nippon Steel Corporation is Japan's largest steelmaker, headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. The company has four business segments, including steelmaking, engineering, chemicals, and system solutions. It is the largest producer of crude steel in Japan and the third largest in the world. The original cooperation was established in 1970 by the merger of Fuji Iron & Steel and Yawata Iron & Steel. The company is on the Forbes Global 2000 list, ranked 1971 in 2023.
The Northeast Arm Iron Range, also called the Temagami Iron Range, is an elongated area of iron ore in Nipissing District of Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It parallels the western side of Lake Temagami's Northeast Arm near the village of Temagami at its northern end. One of many small iron ranges in the Temagami area, the Northeast Arm Range consists of alternating bands of iron-rich and iron-poor sediments. It was discovered in the 1890s and has since seen sporadic mining and mineral exploration activities.
