The determination of a man of steel

Toufic Dalal, owner of Dalal Steel Industries, is at his desk at 06:00 everyday. Today, his desk is a four-room office in a building he owns on Makhoul Street off Hamra, but he will eventually relocate to a multi-level, modern facility outside of Beirut he has just finished building. A sign of moving forward, one might think, especially as Dalal Steel was a multi-million, family business, exporting prefabricated homes and other steel structures. That was on July 22. The next day, three Israeli missiles levelled his 25,000m2 factory, destroying $20 million worth of industrial machinery and products and incurring losses of $4 million to $7 million in anticipated revenues. Four hundred of Dalal Steel’s 600 employees found themselves out of work. He recalls the day he heard of the strike, some 65 km east of Beirut. “I drove there immediately and I saw the 25,000m2 factory on the ground, but