Algoma Steel remains optimistic.

Crashing domestic steel prices and a continuing onslaught of foreign-dumped steel bled more red ink for Algoma Steel Inc. in the last three months of 2000.

The 100-year-old Sault Ste. Marie sheet and plate producer-wrapped up another year announcing a $33.1-million fourth-quarter loss. The 4,000-employee company, the city's largest employer, has lost money in nine of its past 10 quarters, accumulating $142 million in losses for the past two years.

And though the first few months of 2001 likely won't show much improvement, says Mario Dalla-Vicenza, the vice-president of finance and administration, he believes the worst days of this latest North America-wide crisis in the steel industry are behind them.

With a pending trade case against foreign steel makers expected to go in Algoma Steel's favour this spring, domestic producers anticipate the market will recover sufficiently to inch up steel prices.

"No question (the market will recover) that's why everyone's pushing for price increases right now,'" says Dalla-Vicenza, who expects sheet and plate prices to stabilize and Algoma's depleted order, books to strengthen later this year.

Following the lead of U.S.-based steel companies and Stelco, Algoma decided to raise prices for hot-rolled sheet by $40 (Cdn) per tonne starting in March.

Dalla-Vicenza says prices had dipped so low, the industry simply couldn't sustain itself and steel makers couldn't cover their variable and fixed costs. Foreign imports have slowed with the impending threat of Canadian and American trade cases resulting in domestic producers being able to wrestle back market share.

Algoma is expecting a successful outcome in their trade action complaints launched against 13 countries to stop unfairly priced hot-rolled sheet metal from being brought into Canada, Dalla-Vicenza says. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is in the midst of their investigation. A preliminary ruling is expected in April.

Dalla-Vicenza insists trade law reform is a must to stem further waves of cheap offshore steel. He says the current process only knocks out predatory pricing on a country-by-country basis, but doesn't implicate the international steel trades who "go scot-free."

The cash-strapped company, which is carrying $495.9 million in long-term debt, has whittled it's operations down in recent years to its core steel-making business by selling off assets, issuing layoffs, postponing capital spending and adhering to a cash conservation policy.

The dire market conditions forced the company to shave production by 15 per cent, 25,000 tonnes per month, resulting in about 200 layoffs. Dalla-Vicenza doesn't anticipate any further reductions and says they are monitoring the situation on a "day-by-day" basis in balance with their order book as to whether to restore production capacity.

"We are the best of the worst," says Tom Bonell, head of United Steelworkers Local 2251, Algoma's largest union, alluding to the less efficient mills and more precarious financial positions many bankrupt U.S. steel producers are operating under.

"Algoma's going to be around for a long time," Bonell says. "We just don't know what it's going to look like at the end of the day sometimes."