Can you imagine the trouble we’d be in had the Liberals kept the not-smart Governor?
November 17, 2025: Algoma Steel Group Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTL; TSX: ASTL) (“Algoma” or “the Company”), a leading Canadian producer of hot and cold rolled steel sheet and plate products, today announced that it has completed its $500 million financing transaction with the Governments of Canada and Ontario, consistent with the binding term sheets announced on September 29, 2025.
March 23, 2026: One of the largest rounds of layoffs in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., history is officially happening today. Hundreds of employees with Algoma Steel have worked their final shift at the plant as the company transitions from its blast furnace and coke production to electric steelmaking.
The financing was to change the company to be more like America’s top steel producer: Nucor – that produces steel from scrap using electricity rather making raw steel from coking coal and iron ore.
“These seven-year facilities strengthen Algoma’s balance sheet, providing enhanced financial flexibility as the Company advances its Electric Arc Furnace (“EAF”) transformation and pursues opportunities to strengthen and diversify its business.”
Sounded like a Take the Money and Run financing scheme.
Ontario voted for this. Now they get to live with it.
they sure did. they picked a Liberal and got liberalism up the wazoo
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/terry-sheehan(88944)
way to go Soo !!!
Every single job in shithole ontariowe needs subsidization by western tax dollars these days. Algoma should have been closed years ago.
Electric smelting, eh? Powered by windmills? Good luck with that.
Ontario has about 16 large nuclear reactors with four more in the planning stages. There are also 4 SMRs under construction with the potential for dozens more in the years ahead.
Although true, the one closest to the Algoma plant in Sault Ste. Maria is about 750 km away. They are at least partially running off the former Lake Superior Power Plant, which is next door, which produces up to 110 MW of combined heat and power, using Natural Gas as a fuel. Plus up to another 300MW from a Hydro One station at Third Line East, which will use whatever is available on the grid.
Most of Ontario’s electricity is nuclear (48%), followed by hydro (23%), then natural gas (17%). Renewable is 12% (wind is 9%, solar is 2%, bioenergy <1%).
That is installed power, not a useful measure for swindlemills and subsidy ffarms.
Algoma Steel is doomed, they’re building an electric arc plant that depends on scrap metal as a raw material. They need to ship the equivalent of 3 million cars worth of scrap to Sault St. Marie to feed the furnaces. This alone makes it uneconomical. Then add that the whole country only consumes 2 million cars a year, brings up the question of how are they going to run this thing? There are already 20 Electric arc furnaces running in Canada now. Every single one of them is in a better location than Algoma. This is simply the Liberals throwing away our money to hide the fact that they’ve destroyed yet another Canadian industry.
They better not scrap 2million cars a year! Since nobody wants EVs and few people can afford to buy a new car anyway we’re going to need to keep those cars on the road just like Cuba.
No one saw this coming? Modern manufacturing doesn’t require very many people.
Also, when this is over Algoma Steel isn’t really a steel maker anymore, they’re a steel recycler.
Ontario voted for Liberals who promised to drive the West’s oil industry and farming into bankruptcy with stupid green laws and carbon taxes. They thought they had voted to do this to Alberta and Saskatchewan, not to themselves.
Sadly and hilariously they will learn nothing from this.
Can we expect anything else from someone that chants “Elbows Up!” while doing the chicken dance thingy?
Besides shooting themselves in the foot with this foolhardy “green” approach to manufacturing steel, there are other factors at play. Tariffs, of course.
BUT, the US allowed the purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel, with the agreement allowing US Steel to hold onto their name and operations, with significant investments from Japan to allow the US Steel manufacturers to boost production. That’s key, because before that the US was the primary importer of Canadian steel (about 90% of what Canada exported). The US is still the main importer of Canadian steel, but the US administration wanted to remove the total dependency on foreign steel for national security reasons.
Currently, the Nippon Steel/ US Steel meld makes that operation the 3rd largest steel manufacturer in the world (inclusive of the mega-China operations). It was a solid move. Unfortunately, it hurts our Canadian friends, but markets are not static, and the Canadian industry is having trouble learning that fact. They seem to be applying the Blockbuster Video busines plan of late. And the Canadian government seems to be throwing money down that hole.
He is smart,… like potato.