MOD looking at taking over Sheffield Forgemasters
 

To protect the supply of British Steel for the Nuclear Sub fleet.

https://news.sky.com/story/defence-c...maker-12151847

Another bit of SLOW to see whats going on - more than 20 years ago, I’d have thought that when a Czech company (Skoda) was the nearest company capable of making the hub for the London Eye, that British industry would have taken up the slack...

The same for ship's propellors. They used to be made in the Northwest of England but when Germany was reunified massive EU low interest loans were made available for foundries in East Germany.
The Brits couldn't compete so the plant was closed down.
With it followed the shipbuilding industry.

That would be the level playing field then.

It is understood that the fresh demands were unexpectedly tabled at a meeting with Lord Frost on Thursday......

.....The second is new: that the European Commission is exempt from state aid provisions. This would let the bloc channel money into EU industries, for example for coronavirus recovery plans, while the UK could not. This could put Britain at a disadvantage to France, Spain or Italy, countries that are expected to benefit from the lion’s share of the EU fund......

The one thing that London and Brussels can agree on is that the new demands were imposed at the insistence of France, with the support of Spain and Italy.....

The British shipbuilding industry was well into its death spiral long before the reunification of Germany, and it had nothing to do with propellors

Asia is the shipbuilding competitor not Europe. Like Korea. Germany is down to a few specialized high yield vessels. Submarines, military, research, environmental, yachts and super huge modular built cruise ships.

Civil Servants taking over the running of a business. Yup that will be a roaring success as they will ensure the business conforms to ever Woke initiative and fits into the criteria as a shining example of Govt intervention.

Look be reasonable people, the business has met every single piece of diversity / gender / diversity inclusion criteria............. you are unrealistic if you expect it to produce something that can be used by anybody.

Oh I wish I was joking.

Why, I do recall a civil servant Admin Officer running a highly successful cash & carry business. Trouble was, he was meant to be running the Chinook admin section in AbbeyWood at the time. His boss, an Executive Officer who'd looked into why he was making over 1,000 phone calls a month, was given a right bollocking for exposing this fraud. Not the done thing dear, off you go.

Oh I wish I was joking!

British corruption is everywhere old boy. The main players seem to blame the EU as the criminals for some reason. One for ORAC, I remember the loan for foundary equipment of 50 million for a Sheffield Steel manufacturer that was arranged by the DfT at the beginning of 2010, being overturned as the first piece of economic damage carried out by Cameron when he came to power. Some of us have memories. Wonder if he had shares in the opposition?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...days-39w93bswn

Sheffield Forgemasters to be nationalised ‘in days’

Sheffield Forgemasters, a 200-year-old bastion of the British steel industry, could be nationalised within days to ensure security of supply for the construction of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet.

While Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel empire has been in crisis since the collapse of its key lender Greensill Capital, Sheffield Forgemasters too has been going through one of its periodic financial cataclysms.

Commentators have indicated that Forgemasters could or should be combined with the jewel in the Gupta crown, the Stocksbridge steel plant — like Forgemasters, a key provider to Britain’s two most important defence companies, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, responsible for the construction of the UK’s submarine fleet.

Instead it has emerged that ministers are to intervene directly. The Ministry of Defence is close to taking it into public ownership, possibly in days, Sky News has reported……

Talks about a taxpayer takeover have been going on since last year as the government prepared to flex its post-Brexit interventionist muscle. While any nationalisation could be at the behest of Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, it is likely to be managed through UK Government Investments, the Whitehall institution. Ministers could cite national security issues for the intervention.

The MoD confirmed that Forgemasters is a “strategic supplier” but declined to comment further. Forgemasters has said it is a “prime contractor” to the ministry.

The British shipbuilding industry was on the slide long before the UK joined Europe - a myopic and stupid management and owners, a set of unions straight out of "I'm all right Jack" and a Govt that never has a plan for longer than 12 months (or the next election). Typical was the use of slipways when the Koreans had covered construction docks that allowed all weather working. Try that on the Clyde or the Tyne.

The City of London realised in the '70's that the there was no big money in engineering of any sort - you make money by dealing in money - which is what has happened in the UK

As pointed out above even the trillions of German subsidies have left them with a highly specialised, niche operation that only employs a small fraction of what it did 30 years ago

Any facts to support your comments?

Really? Which of Geoje, Okpo etc have these covered docks of which you speak?

There was a covered slipway (or two in fact) on the Clyde back in the day. Also two covered building docks on the Wear. Not there anymore. There is one on the Torridge as well.

And I have tried all weather working on the Tyne. Bit wet and windy from time to time, but eminently do-able.

I've taken dozens of vessels through the Clyde dry docks at all times of the year. On one occasion the snow was so deep no vehicles could get within 200m. Work continued with deliveries being handballed or dragged on skids through the snow drifts to the dock side. Tried it and won!!
There ain't such a thing as bad weather, just poor clothing. :ok:

Maybe BAE Barrow, with possibly RR, could be encouraged/induced/persuaded by the govt to takeover forgemasters which would go someway to resurrecting the dream
of an old British company (Vickers) to build major warships using their own steel!

Except what they do is really specialist castings. For context, the entire UK shipbuilding industry used about 8000-10000 tonnes of steel pa. Which includes plate thickness between 6mm and 24mm (plus the submarine thicknesses) in various grades from AH27 to Q1N. Plus sections (T-bars, OBP) of varying sizes.

Total UK steel production is 7.5m tonnes pa. So shipbuilding is about 0.15% of annual production.

Indeed,

The problem for the yards on the Tyne and the Wear was that their location was totally unsuited to the new breed of supertankers and bulk carriers that have come to dominate merchant shipping. For example, I was one of over a million people who watched the ESSO Northumbria leave the Tyne for her first outing in open waters. That was about as big as dare be launched from a Tyne slipway. The timing was vital, due to tidal times and the narrowness of the river. As for the wear. I mourn the loss of Austin & Pickersgill, to whom we owe a debt for the old 'Liberty Ship' design. In the seventies, they came out with their modern SD14 version. But it was too late and the new breed was unstoppable.

Last, but not least. Yours truly had a chat with a careers teacher less than a decade after the Northiumbria took to sea. Having tiold him my grandfather was a welder, that was it. He deployed his enormous knowledge and proclaimed I should get a welding apprenticeship at Swans.... I responded " What for ? They'll be gone soon. Have you seen all those little Koreans building huge ships for a bowl of rice a day?" He looked at me like I was some creature from another planet. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thread drift: I noticed that as announced last November MoD took AWE plc in house (as an NDPB) at the beginning of the month. So ending a Government Owned - Contractor Operated part of the defence 'nuclear related supply chain'. (Joke follows) Any chance of them taking BAE Systems Submarines in house?

My father was a shipwright at Swans and I was expected to follow him into working at one of the Tyne yards (grandfather and uncles all worked in the various yards). Was a bit like the dockers at the time, there was always a job available if you had family working there. I told my father that I was intending to join the RAF and that caused a bit of a family ferfuffle and I became the blacksheep of the family for a while. My father later acknowledged I had done the right thing and said the Tyne was a dying river long before he had retired. He cited the same reason - the Tyne couldn't match the Korean prices plus it carried the millstone of seemingly interminable demarcation disputes that marred that industry (but that's for another discussion elsewhere).