British Steel opens new £26m service centre

The business specialises in manufacturing steel profiles for the earth moving, forklift, construction, shipbuilding, and mining markets.

It will enable the company to explore growth opportunities across the globe for its standard and bespoke forklift mast profiles, with the new warehousing and processing facility forecast to significantly increase throughput within the next two years, says British Steel.

Richard Napier, British Steel’s sales director, special profiles, said: “This is the largest single investment in our special profiles business for more than 30 years, demonstrating our owner’s commitment to strengthening British Steel’s position at the heart of UK manufacturing. The new facility also firmly establishes us as one of the world’s leading manufacturers and processors of value-added profiles for the forklift industry. Our extended range of products are designed and manufactured to exact customer requirements, with the new milling capability offering profiles with tolerances of just 0.1mm – precision few global competitors can match. We have already had extremely positive feedback about this investment from current customers, and potential new ones, and although our primary product offering will be for forklift mast profiles, we expect to expand this to include other product applications too.”

British Steel’s milling capability will primarily service the high-reach forklift truck market. These vehicles are typically used to move loads in warehouses and because they operate at heights of up to 8 metres, tight tolerances are needed for the mast sections – the moving parts which enable the truck’s forks to reach, collect and move items.

The facility, called the Skinningrove Service Centre, includes four new CNC lathes for turning mill rolls, three automated bandsaws for cutting stock to exact lengths, a laser measurement system for process control of every bar rolled, and a warehousing system for storing and processing material from the rolling mill.