The discover of gold in today's Minas
Gerais state provided new stimulus to the steel industry.
Forgeries were established to produce the iron implements
to be used in the mines.
However, the same merchant practices
which fostered the discovery of metals in our land held
back the construction of a Brazilian steel industry. The
colony was to be exploited to the maximum and trade only
gold and agricultural products. Portugal even prohibited
the construction of new forgeries and ordered the destruction
of the existing ones.
This status changes when D. João
VI came to the throne of Portugal. In 1795, new forgeries
had their construction authorized. In 1808, the Portuguese
royal family arrives in Rio de Janeiro, running scared
of the invasion of Napoleon's troops of Portuguese land.
Several steel companies were built since then.
In 1815, the Morro do Pilar mill, in
Minas Gerais, was finished. In 1815, the Ipanema plant,
in the outskirts of Sorocaba, starts production of cast
iron. Other plants were open in Congonhas do Campo, Caeté
and São Miguel de Piracicaba, all in Minas Gerais.
After this promising beginning of the
19th century, there was a fall in iron production. Competition
with products imported from England was uneven and hindered
the further development of the Brazilian steel industry.
Besides, manpower was rare, since workers, in their majority,
were taken by sugar and later coffee farms.
Even so, a milestone in the history
of the Brazilian steel industry happened during this period:
the foundation, in 1876, of the Ouro Preto Mining School,
which would graduate Mining Engineers, Metallurgists and
Geologists.
