Building Quality and Trust

The Steel Company of Canada is given life through the merger of Montreal Rolling Mills and the Hamilton Steel and Iron Company, allowing Stelco to make long-term plans to invest heavily in steelmaking technology. Over the course of our iconic history, Stelco’s determined and innovative workforce has remained the company’s most valuable resource.

Through its early years, Stelco encountered steady growth by delivering continuous improvements to the quality, cost and range of products it delivered to customers. Stelco established a quality-driven formula that served as a foundation of enduring customer trust. This careful approach helped the company maneuver the challenges brought on by the First World War.

Stelco emerged from the sharp depression of 1921 in a better market position than its competitors and continued to diversify its range of products and put an emphasis on updating technologies to endure the Great Depression of the 1930s. With WWII transforming the nation’s economy, Stelco re-engineered its production facilities to rise to the challenge of wartime demands.

Stelco adapted to the market realities of Canada’s post-war economic and grew more resilient by adapting its production to capitalize on the growth of the automobile, appliance, and agriculture sectors. By the 1960s, Stelco had become Canada’s largest producer of cold drawn steel, solidifying its position as a truly national steelmaker.

Stelco continued its progress as an industry-leader throughout the early ‘60s and opened a Research and Development facility in Burlington, which housed innovative production breakthroughs throughout the ‘70s. Stelco employees are credited with engineering a number of industry firsts, from coilbox technology, to methods of pipe production, to a new line of high strength, low alloy grade steel.

Quality control best practices and training were systematically expanded across Stelco’s operations in the 1980s as the company’s workforce faced a recession and shifting market patterns with resilience and a focus on the future. Working with leadership, they deployed considerable efforts to adapt to new environmental regulations implemented to reduce air pollution.

Stelco faced new competition from Asian facilities, and strategically re-engineered its operations in order to win contracts from Japanese-owned auto assembly plants across southern Ontario. Through more challenges brought on by the recession of the early 1990’s, Stelco continued to reinvest in its facilities with a focus on new technology and facility updates as the new millennium dawned.

Through changes in ownership, the company’s employees led even greater advances in personal safety as well as steelmaking processes that have well served its communities and our nation. On November 1, 2024, Stelco was acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs, marking the start of a new chapter in Stelco’s legacy. But no matter what the future has in store, Stelco steel will always be made by Canadians, in facilities built and managed by Canadians.