British Steel Plant To Use Mass Methods

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7064, 25 January 1933, Page 7

British Steel Plant To Use Mass Methods

SITE CONTAINING HALF A BILLION TONS OF ORE TO BE DEVELOPED LONDON, Jan. 2. A new industry for Britain is being started under tho auspices of the Bankers' Industrial Development Company, an organisation founded in 1930 by the Bank of England to facilitate finance for basic industries. It is a £3,300,000 project for the large-scale production of basic Bessemer steel in Northamptonshire, the promoters being Stewarts and Lloyds, Ltd., representing a group of firms claiming to produce 80 per cent, of tho steel tubos made in England.

Construction is to start at once on a 26,000-acre sito estimated to contain 500,000,000 tons of ore. A plant for tube manufacture is to be set up on the same site, thereby concentrating production. It is said that hitherto there has been no adequate domestic source in Britain for tho class of steel which consequently has been largely imported. The dimensions of the traffic are indicated by the fact that out of the total foreign steel reaching Britain the larger portion of the cheaper kinds are reported to consist of goods manufactured by this process.

The promoters emphasise that the schemo was worked out beforo Britain adopted a tariff. The introduction of a tariff has thus increased tho favourableness of conditions which were in any case promising.

Stewarts and Lloyds have given an assurance that they have no intontion of abandoning tube manufacture in Scotland. They add that tho replacing of imported Bessemer steel by the home-pfoduced article will involve new allocation of orders as between their Scottish and English, works. Corby, where the chief works of the Northamptonshire scheme are to bo located, is a village with 2000 inhabi-

tants. The district is off the beaten track and still has many thatched roofs. Two thousand more men are expected to be at work there within tho next few weeks and 500 new houses are to bo built as a start.