The story
Clifton and Frank A. Sherman founded Dominion Foundries and Steel in 1912 in Hamilton, Ontario. Dofasco was incorporated as Dominion Steel Castings Company Limited in 1912, becoming Dominion Foundries and Steel Company in 1917. Sherman Mine opened in 1968 and closed in 1990. Its longtime nickname, "Dofasco," was adopted as its legal name in 1980.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
On March 12, 2025, then-prime minister-designate Mark Carney visited the Dofasco Steel Plant as a response to American tariffs on steel, as a part of the greater Canada-United States trade war.
Dofasco has won awards for being the "most sustainable manufacturing company" in North America.
Acquisition
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.
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Dofasco's Canadian management initially didn't want to be taken over. 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. 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.
Arcelor was itself three months later taken over by the world's largest steel producer, Mittal. 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.
From Wikipedia’s article on Dofasco, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4