The Tudhope Anderson Company was founded in 1910 on West Street South in Orillia. It was re-incorporated as Otaco Ltd. in 1936 using the initials Orillia Tudhope Anderson Co.

The name Otaco and Taco was used on many of the products made by Otaco including stoves, heaters, logging sleights, snow-plows, wheelbarrows and farm and logging wagons.

After the depression in the 1930's Taco started producing thousands of kits to convert cars to tractors called the Auto-Trac. You could buy an Auto-Trac for $149 and, with a new tractor costing $600 or more, the Auto-Trac sold all over Ontario and eastern Canada.

During the Second World War Otaco retooled to make undercarriages and wheels for the Mosquito Bomber. After the war the range of products expanded to include pumps and water systems, boat kits and boat trailers. The production of farm implements and plow shares continued to grow and Otaco became one of Canada's largest manufacturers of farm wagons, wheels and hubs.

Starting in the late 1940s the popular line of Minnitoys also became an important part of plant production with thousands of sturdy Minnitoy tanker and transport trucks being sold across Canada.

In 1948 Otaco became the first Canadian company to receive a license from International Nickel to produce a new metal – a cast iron material with the properties of steel known as Ductalloy Iron. Otaco started producing Ductalloy castings for other companies as well as for its own products including the Gold Tip Plow Share.

In the mid 1950s Otaco designed and built a wide range of over-the-snow equipment for operation "Deep Freeze", an Antarctic expedition. Sleighs of up to 20-ton capacity, wanigans ( a mobile home made to withstand the most hostile environments) and ice runway maintenance machinery were made resulting in Otaco receiving the U.S. Navy Certificate of Merit – the first to be awarded outside the United States.

Otaco was purchased in 1961 by R.M. Barr and became a division of Bartaco Industries until sold to Redlaw Industries in 1984. Redlaw continued to operate the foundry until closing in 1990.