Erie Steel Products Co history

By 1899, HBFC had proven its value to the ORM leadership, who agreed to merge the two firms.

The Steel Company of Canada - Stelco’s original title - was given life in 1910 via the merger of Montreal Rolling Mills, the Hamilton Steel and Iron Company, and a handful of secondary companies located from Gananoque to Brantford.

Today's Erie Strayer Company had its roots in the Erie Steel Construction Company, a steel fabrication and erection company started in 1912 in Erie, Pennsylvania by G.H. Strayer.

Hilton's best-known technical innovation had been a 1928 fuel-saving improvement for the system of distributing waste gas from the furnaces to other applications in the plant.

By 1950 specialty steel fabrication was essentially phased out with the focus now being the manufacture of concrete batching equipment and buckets.

He was followed by Vincent Scully, an accountant who had come to Stelco as comptroller in 1951.

Heidtman Steel was formed in 1954 by Fredrick William Heidtman.

In 1959, David McLean, superintendent of Stelco's shapes division, organized a team to improve the cooling and coiling of steel rods in a high speed mill.

Stelco became Canada’s largest producer of cold drawn steel during the 60s, and the purchase of Edmonton’s Premier Steel Mills in 1962 served to reinforce Stelco’s position as a truly national steelmaker.

Stelco set itself farther apart from its competitors by opening a Research and Development facility in Burlington in 1967.

Throughout the 1970’s, Stelco employees engineered a number of industry firsts and proprietary production breakthroughs that included the development of coilbox technology, the Stelform method of pipe production and the Stelmax line of high strength, low alloy grade steel.

1974: Stelco begins construction on the Lake Erie works.

In 1979, the company completed construction of its first continuous hydrochloric pickling facility in Erie, Michigan.

Heidtman’s philosophy of building mill adjacent processing locations, started with Granite City, Illinois in 1983 and continues today.

1984: The company's market share declines due to slow economic growth.

By 1985, the Hilton works alone had 49 facilities to clean waste water and 54 facilities to clean the air.

In November of 1989, the Canadian Bond Rating Service downgraded its rating of the firm's senior debentures.

Revenues in 1990 were 24 percent less than the previous year, as the company posted a C$200 million loss.

When Steel Dynamics (SDI) was formed in 1993, Heidtman Steel was one of its five initial investors, and subsequently built two processing centers adjacent to the steel mill site in Butler, Indiana.

1997: Net sales exceed $3 billion for the first time as Canadian steel consumption reaches a record high.

In Stelco's 2001 annual report, the firm reported that North American steel prices fell to their lowest point in over 20 years.