The
modern steel industry
got its start in the late
1850s. Steel has since become a cornerstone of the
global industrial economy. Since
Henry Bessemer's discovery of the
Bessemer converter in
1857, the mass production of
steel
has been based on the business, economic, and social components of the industry.
Steel used to be extremely expensive to make, and it was mainly utilized in
small, high-value objects like knives, swords, and
armor
In India,
The
Bengal Iron Works was created in
1870 in
Kulti,
Bengal, and commenced production in
1874.
Dorabji Tata started the
Tata Iron and
Steel Company
(
TISCO) in
1907 as part of his father's conglomerate. It was the largest steel factory in the
British Empire by
1939. In
1951, the corporation embarked on a massive refurbishment and expansion initiative.
Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru, a
socialist, thought that maximizing steel output was necessary for India's technological development. In the
1950s, he created
Hindustan
Steel Limited (
HSL), a government-owned corporation, and set up three steel factories.
In the twenty-first century, India's steel industry began to grow into
Europe. Tata Steel of India made a successful $11.3 billion offer to buy
European steelmaker Corus Group in January 2007. Mittal Steel
(headquartered in London but with Indian management) joined with Arcelor
in 2006 after a $34.3 billion acquisition bid to form ArcelorMittal
(based in Luxembourg City), the world's largest steelmaker with 10% of global output.