A very long timeline of steelmaking in Stocksbridge
and live on Freeview channel 276
Current owner Liberty Steel brought optimism back to the business - until the pandemic created a new crisis leading to fears for 5,000 jobs nationally.
Today it is part of the Speciality Steels division which employs 762 in Stocksbridge - supplying the aerospace, oil and gas and the general engineering markets - and 865 in Rotherham.
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Hide Ad1842 - Samuel Fox established a steelworks in a disused cotton mill in Stocksbridge, at that time a small settlement, and went on to build up much of the infrastructure
1851 - The company developed the famous paragon umbrella frame
1860s - The Stocksbridge works includes furnaces and rolling mills
1877 - A railway line was built to link the steelworks with the wider region
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Hide Ad1918 - Samuel Fox & Co joined with several companies to form the United Steel Company
1967 - The works are nationalised into the British Steel Corporation and become ‘Stocksbridge Engineering Steels’
1999 - Taken over by Corus
2006 - Taken over by Indian company Tata
2009 - Big round of redundancies
2016 - 685+ redundancies
2017 – Tata sells entire UK steel business to Liberty for £100m
2018 - Liberty invests and announces plans to reopen mothballed furnaces
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Hide Ad2020 - 283 jobs in South Yorkshire axed – including 250 in Stocksbridge - axed due to ‘political uncertainty and Brexit’
2020 - Plans announced to invest £60m and double production in Rotherham
2021 (Feb) - reveals it has been forced to ‘manage the impact’ on jobs due to plummeting aircraft sales in the pandemic
2021 (March) - lender Greensill collapses into administration raising fears for entire 5,000 strong Liberty Steel UK business which includes 12 steel plants including in Rotherham, Stocksbridge, Newport and Hartlepool.
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Hide AdA spokesman for steel unions – Community, Unite and GMB – said: “We have been encouraged by government’s commitment to taking on this challenge, and the growing consensus that to build back better and greener we need a strong and sustainable steel industry.
“No other UK company can produce the specialist steels made by Liberty’s UK operations.”