BRITAIN’S STEEL TRADE

Southland Times, Issue 22217, 9 January 1934, Page 10

BRITAIN’S STEEL TRADE

MARKED BY GREAT ACTIVITY. WHAT SHEFFIELD IS DOING. The steel industry is always a good barometer for the general state .of trade. Steel enters into so many industries that it reflects general conditions. For that reason the following article specially contributed to “Quality,” the organ of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, is of exceptional interest and value as bearing upon the recovery of trade in Great Britain: — Production continues to increase. Works continue to be expanded or modernized. Fresh industries are being introduced. By research and experiment, qualities of local products continue to be bettered. The hungry demands of engineers, gas makers, and chemical firms for lighter and stronger steels, for steels that can stand greater temperatures and stresses, and withstand more stringent chemical actions, are being increasingly met by our local metallurgists. Sheffield stands for steel and the science of steel. In this connection we have many remarkable facts, of which one may be mentioned here. There is a great move to drive road vehicles by British coal gas instead of imported petrol. Transport waggons were propelled by gas during the war, when foreign petrol was scarce and costly. The gas had to be carried in balloon-like containers. The demand of to-day is for highly compressed gas in small, snug, easily portable containers. Sheffield steel makers are supplying the want. They are making steel containers which will hold an enormous force or pressure of gas in an exceedingly small space, with the result that buses and other automobiles are being converted, or designed, to use a purely British fuel in place of an imported commodity.

Output Increased 40 Per Cent.

In the matter of output Sheffield works are now almost, if not quite, touching a level of 100,000 tons per month, certainly more than 95,000 tons —as against 60,000 to 75,000 tons per month one and two years ago. And 100,000 tons of Sheffield steel counts for more in the consumption of raw materials, in the employment of labour, in the payment of wages, and in the value and variety of finished products than two or three times such a tonnage in most steel making areas, for the reason that a great percentage of the Sheffield output consists of the highest grade steels and alloys known to the world of metallurgy. Brisk Christmas Business.

In the light trades of Sheffield, which use the highest classes of steel and alloys, activity has become pronounced. It is many years since we had such a vigorous business in what is called Ihe Christmas shopping trade. Retailers have visualized a big demand loi Christmas presents in cutlery, plated wares, silver goods, pewter and nickel articles this year, and have ordered accordingly. Our manufacturers aie not reaping the cash benefits of this business as might be supposed, tor they have an enormous productive capacity, and competition keeps prices very low, as compared with previous times, but in work and wages and “turnover” there are remarkable doings this year. The growing disposition of people to spend Christmas in some hotel somewhere instead of at home, is causing a big demand for cutlery and other table utensils for hotels. Owners of restaurants and cafes are also bigger customers for Sheffield goods. One of our most noted and oldestablished firms reports a nearly 50 per cent, increase of business, as compared with this time last year. Other firms working short time twelve months ago are doing full time now._ One of our most progressive firms, with a recently doubled capacity of production, has all hands and machines going. A feature of local industry is the big and growing activity of chromium plated goods, these things being preferred by many people to take the place of silver-plated wares, though trade in the latter is improving, following a period of depression. Pewter manufactures are in growing fashion and demand, and local firms are making some extremely attractive products at popular prices. The best quality of silver goods is in surprisingly vigorous request as compared with the slackness of the past few years. Australia is a much improved market for Sheffield’s best silver, electroplated, and chromium-plated wares, and some kinds of ordinary as well as stainless cutlery. Among works extensions there is the erection of a big six-storey high cutlery factory, which is being built almost entirely of Sheffield-made steel and concrete and locally-made glass. It will be a striking building and its owners are confident of ample business to keep it fully running w’hen completed. They have for several months past been employed to capacity. A-new line in Sheffield’s industries is the installation of plant for the manufacture of paper-making machinery in one of the old steel works not recently well employed. The idea is to supply a want hitherto met by machinery imported from America. It is figured out that the machinery can be made here more economically than in the United States, and of Sheffield steel—the best in the world. Of the British market for such machinery there is no doubt or question. It is a big and growing market. This new enterprise, or industry, following closely upon the introduction of lead sheet and pipe manufacture, the making of galvanised wire and fencing, and the production of highly attractive tubular steel chairs and related furniture, evidences the progress of industrial Sheffield. Magnet steels and magnets, stainless steel and products, safety razors and blades, high-grade sheets and small bars and rods for automobiles and aircraft, remain in keen demand, but such is the productive capacity of the works, and such is the competition, that market prices do not yield big

profits. But the business provides much employment. Tool Trade Meets Competition.

In the tool trade foreign competition is better met than for forty or fifty years past. The home market has been nearly captured by home firms, and there is growing business with the dominions and a few foreign countries. The activity is spread over general engineering tools, hand and machine, electricians’ tools, joiners’ and other wood-workers’ tools, and motor and typewriter mechanics’ tools. Sheffield is also doing an increasing business in surgical and scientific appliances. In our medium trades there is an improvement in the demand for castings and forgings for builders, colliery companies, gas and electricity undertakings, shipbuilders—especially naval shipbuilders—for chemical works, for railway waggon and coach builders, and for the makers of rayon, or artificial silk. Gold mining and other mining concerns in South Africa and the East Indies are favouring Sheffield with good orders for tools, equipments, and washing and separating appliances. 'Hie demand for modern stoves, cooking and heating ranges, small boilers and radiators, is good. Sheffield district makers of fire bricks, general refractories, furnace linings, sanitary pipes, water conveyors, etc., are very busy. In the new housing schemes designed on the principle of a small number of dwellings per acre of land, and with bath rooms, water carriage systems, and hot as well as cold water supplies, there is involved a bigger demand for earthenware as for lead and iron pipes, per house, than in past times. The development of the remarkable Gas Grid scheme in this district, initiated by the Sheffield Gas Company, and covering nearly thirty colliery companies an,d blast-furnace concerns, to make gas at the pits and iron works and “pipe” it to cities, towns, villages and odd factories and farms, is causing a good demand for castings, plates, sheets, bars and rods, and for special steels to stand high temperatures and severe chemical actions. Coupled with this good factor for Sheffield’s industries, there is an increasing demand for modern screens, washeries, and conveyors foi’ collieries, and for antibreakage coal loaders for the docks. The increased activity in naval shipbuilding brings a demand for a hundred and one things in which Sheffield specializes—cast, forged and rolled—these including, of course, guns, armour plates, bullet-proof shields, and projectiles.

Big Railway Business.

The light, medium and heavy trades are all alike interested in railway developments. Two of the big British companies are, between them, going to spend about £5,000,000 on new locomotives, waggons, carriages, rails and sleepers, and Sheffield stands to get a good share of the work. Additional to this we shall see more than 200,000 aged waggons broken up and replaced by about 100,000 new and big capacity trucks before long, and whereas the old ones are mostly wood, the new ones will be largely, if not entirely, made of steel. Overseas orders for railway steel and rolling stock and equipments are expected to be very large in the not distant future. The Argentine Government is going to spend over 100 million dollars on railways and bridges, and much of that business will come to Britain, and Sheffield will have its share. India needed another 30,000 miles of railways before the war. Today, the railway mileage, the rolling stock and general transport facilities, are seriously below trade needs, and a long programme of extensions and replacements will have to be undertaken very soon. The Indian steel and engineering works are not adequate to meet more than a small proportion of the demand; much of the material and equipment will have to be imported; and with the new Preference for British goods, the improved competitive power of our steel makers and engineers, and the increased prices of American and Continental European products, we can be confident of the major percentage of the business on account of Indian railways. Australia, East and West Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Finland are all about to launch out on considerable railway extension schemes, and Sheffield will secure much of the work involved. Jewish Business for Sheffield.

A German political error is diverting trade to Sheffield and other British industrial areas. The Hitler treatment of Jews in Germany has stirred the entire Hebrew race to boycott German goods, and Jewish merchants, shopkeepers, and consumers the world over are looking round for goods which are not German. The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce has received inquiries from Jews in Britain and overseas for names and addresses of firms in this city able to supply goods of kinds hitherto obtained from Germany—cutlery, plate, tools, implements, instruments, machinery, and utensils for many purposes.

Among local industrial expansions of capacity mention may be made of the new plant of United Steels, Ltd. This is a rolling mill designed on a new principle. It is at Templeborough. It will make steel strip, which is in increasing demand, on the most economical and mass production methods known to steel works engineering science. Huge New “Wonder” Forge. Another of our big concerns (English Steel Corporation, Vickers’ Works), with Empire-wide ramifications, and its chief steel plant where, of course, it ought to be—in Sheffield —is having a wonderful new forge built. This firm has recently erected a mammoth steel melting shop which amazed those who have seen it. Now there comes along, by the same firm, this huge new forge, with a tremendous hydraulic press and all other equipments on the biggest and best principles yet designed by engineers and metallurgists. It will be a real steel industry wonder of the world.