[2] Until the arrival of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, in 1808, the manufacture of iron was monitored in the Colony, having been allowed only in restricted periods.

The venture started by Afonso Sardinha (father and son) worked where the Portuguese Crown allowed; and after them, Domingos Pereira Ferreira did the same.

After the Enlightenment reform of the University of Coimbra, its professor of chemistry Domingos Vandelli encouraged many of his students to study mineralogy and metallurgy.

Back from his travels, Bonifacio was commissioned to restore the iron factory of d'Alge Foz, Portugal, where he engaged the German metallurgists Frederico Luiz Varnhagen and Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege.

Manuel Ferreira da Camara and Aguiar Sá Bittencout returned to Brazil with a project to deploy an iron factory in Minas Gerais.

Decisive in the choice of location was the availability of wood to feed the furnaces, and of water to power the air blowing machines and hammers, in proximity to the deposits of magnetite.

Rodrigo S. Coutinho created the District of Ipanema and ordered a team of Swedish technicians, hired in December 1809, and led by Carl Gustav Hedberg.

[3] Hedberg's foreman, the Swede Lars Hultgren, stayed with Varnhagen and played a great part in building and operating the furnace.

They had plans to introduce a new, larger, blast furnace and a Bessemer reactor to produce liquid steel, but the operation was interrupted in 1895 due to insufficient income.