Above: The Bradbury Group installed a 62-inch-wide slitting line at Venture Steel’s plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico.
October, 2025- Founded in 1997, Toronto-based Venture Steel’s initial focus was to provide just-in-time service of slit coil for the automotive supply chain. Over the years, the company was acquired and made several acquisitions, and opened new locations in the United States and Mexico. The service center in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, opened in 2012.
Tony Kafato, Venture Steel’s president, entered the steel industry as a summer intern at Dofasco while at university, selling excess inventory. When he graduated, he went to work for Wood Gundy, a Canadian investment firm. “That was not for me,” he says, so he reentered the metals service center industry and stayed put. “It’s an important industry that touches so many parts of the economy, and it is full of great people.”
The coil entry and exit functions are among the parts of the line that are automated.
When Venture expanded into Mexico, building its plant in Mexico (near Saltillo in the state of Coahuila), it installed a 72-inchwide ProEco slitter, managing steel from 0.025 to 0.25 inch thick. “That line has been a workhorse for us,” Kafato says.
This year, Venture Steel Mexico installed a line from Athader S.L. in Spain, which is part of The Bradbury Group, Moundridge, Kansas. The new line is capable of slitting 0.25- inchthick by 62-inch-wide material from 40-ton coils. It can handle 110,000 psi tensile strength coils and run up to 600 feet per minute.
The new equipment helps the company to complete just-in-time orders to its customers.
The slitter features automation, including a double eccentric slitter head with four-arm tooling capstan and automatic slitter tooling changeover, quick-change separators, dual tension rolls with hydraulic lockup and automatic overarm separator changeover. Athader also installed a slit coil packaging line with automatic strapping.
RESILIENCE
“There are several key reasons” to install new equipment, Kafato says. Primarily, “we wanted to provide greater resilience for our customers. Before, we were running 24/7 with the ProEco. To make ourselves more reliable in support of continued growth, we had to put in a second line. We entered Mexico in 2012, and our business there has steadily increased. We have also doubled the size of the plant to 160,000 square feet. It is an undertaking,” he says, “but it happened at a reasonably rapid pace.”
The Ramos Arizpe plant has just under 80 team members, 60 of whom are in operations. “We serve a variety of end-use industries but, in Mexico, our core focus is automotive.” says Kafato. The company also has customers making appliances and energy equipment, and who perform general fabrication. “We sell and ship to OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, stampers and provide toll processing for mills.” Over 90 percent of the business is steel sales, with the remainder being toll processing.
“Venture Steel as a whole has more than doubled volumes over the past 15 years, and the drivers were the U.S. and Mexico market. We operate two plants in the U.S. [Buffalo, Detroit] and we have three facilities in Canada [Toronto, Etobicoke, Barrie],” according to Kafato.
The company ships throughout Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. “We have a heavy emphasis around the Great Lakes, Southern U.S. and, of course, Mexico.”
The new Athader line “has been up and running for a couple months now. Our operators love the line; they say incredible things about it,” Kafato says. “It has delivered on all promises, with increased capabilities. It is state of the art.
“The slitter has improved throughput. We get tighter tolerances and faster changeover for coil entry and exit and the sliffer heads. That means greater efficiencies and better quality product. For our customers, that’s what it is all about.” As a company, he continues, “we pride ourselves in being able to turn orders around quickly, and this line further enables that capability for us.”
Venture Steel doubled the size of its plant in Mexico to 160,000 square feet.
This was the first time Venture Steel worked with Athader. “They have a strong reputation in coil processing so that was a key consideration. It has been an excellent fit for us. As we have run coils, we are very satisfied they did everything they said they would do.”
VIBRANT MARKET
Asked whether the imposition of tariffs by the U.S. on foreign steel had any bearing on the investment decisions for the Mexican plant, Kafato notes that the company already “had been considering growing in Mexico pre-tariff. We could have called it off, but we see a continued growth trend inside Mexico. Every time I visit, there are cranes in the air everywhere, tons of construction and new manufacturers entering the market every day. It is incredibly vibrant.”
He concedes that tariffs have “been a pressure, creating challenges for the supply chain. One of the reasons we are in all three countries is we had prior experiences with tariffs.”
As a result of its broad geographic presence, “we are now a much stronger supplier to our customers. We don’t get stuck on one side of the border.”
Venture Steel’s Mexico plant operates a fleet of trucks and has “a robust delivery program. We have to be incredibly reliable,” Kafato says. “Automotive is one of the most demanding industries.”
The company’s pledge to service is unshakeable. “We will take a last-minute order and deliver in 24 hours. We built a brand that says if you are in a jam, and want to get out of trouble, we will be there for you.”
Within the Venture Steel culture, he adds, “when our people make a rush delivery, there are no complaints. Instead, they high-five one another for a job well done.”
The decisions that are made to invest and build up capabilities are driven by the idea that “we try to earn the business” from existing and new customers.
The Bradbury Group, 620/345-6394, bradburygroup.com
Venture Steel, 416/798-9396, venturesteel.com
