So, it's a big jump from the lead mines of the Yorkshire Dales
to this place. This is the heavy
machine shop at forge masters international in sheffield and we've been invited here today by
gareth barker who's the managing director of the forge division well first of all you just explain
what's happening in here so this is our large uh heavy machine shop so this has been here about
four years now um and it has on our extra ultra large end so we can lift up to 500 tons in here
and this was geared towards our large castings and we can pour up to 600 650 tons of molten steel
and finishes about 350 tons and i think if you put into into context i think of a double decker buses
nominally 10 tons i think so if you imagine the size and scale of some of the things we're doing
in terms of weight is enormous we are we are still one of the biggest world leading in castings in
terms of the size and in fortunes again in western europe we are probably the largest
and in the world again we were up there amongst some of the other big ones and surprisingly you
managed to do this with what quite a small number of workers yeah we have about 800 now on site
turning out uh peak production is about 100 000 tons a year of steel um which if you went back 30
40 years ago there was 25 30 000 people working at on the similar sized site outputting slightly
less than what we do now um so it shows where the technology in terms of the infrastructure
and the capital equipment that's in place now on the people that as things have moved forward there
has been an advancement on how we output and what we can output based on how many people we need
how big are you by comparison with steel industry elsewhere in the world
forge masters is in terms of bulk steel is pretty small unfortunately i think our if
if you measured our tom's output against some of the big the big dominances around the world we
probably we probably won't even even get on their radar in terms of what we output i mean they're
talking millions of tons of steel output and we're a hundred thousand tons and what are the sort of
applications for the products in here where are they going to go where they're going to be used we
we operate in various markets we operate in specifically at the moment um in offshore
so that's either sub-sea down on the production on the seabed we also operate on the top side
part of the platforms safety critical components construction side of the platform and the lifting
of the platform we're then on power generation which is a traditionally forged masters we've
made a lot of gas and steam turbine rotors the nuclear side civil and the defense nuclear
and other defense related industries well that's what's happening now but can i take you back to
the year 1805 when i suppose it really all began on this site and sites around here in sheffield
and what was happening in iron steel then in 1805 this is where we started um and a lot of the the
steel industry started in sheffield so it's part from the uh when the betterment converse started
and moving forward and through some quite big leaps in technology as you can it was a chat
called harry breely wasn't it who invented the process of stainless steel now what difference
did that make i think stainless is one of the biggest advancements in steel in the last 200
years or probably from the early conception of normal carbon steel too but probably the next
biggest is stainless steel um harry breeley 100 years ago invented it by trying to make a
steel which was less corrosive but made a steal which was not corrosive neither did it tarnish
neither did it um have a a metallic taste um which most steels do and that that's kind of where the
the cutlery industry then got hold of of stainless and sheffield again on the back of its cutlery
making uh skills which is steeped in history and silver then moved towards the stainless side of
it um but i mean the stainless steel application uh wasn't only for cutlery i mean it's it's still
presumably an essential part of what you do it is yeah stainless now has moved on from its original
which was it was when he harry originally invented it was quite difficult to work with um it was
quite soft um and was difficult to to engineer in terms of normal cutting and everything else
so as that's progressed through the years it's now you can see in a in a nuclear reactor in a safety
critical offshore pieces in power turbines high temperature rotors are made from a stainless type
derivative and it's all on back of harry brielle's invention 100 years ago i suppose terrible
global disaster that it was though the first world war would have been good for a place like this in
terms of the demand for armament yep at both world wars um in world war one and world war ii the
the the amount of people who worked here on a lot of the defense and some real critical pieces were
made in sheffield and were made in the mills in the lower down valley region be play big
gun barrels armaments everything ammunition was also made on this side so it was it was critical
to to our defense in world war one and world war ii and to our survival really
exactly to where we are today but you were telling me earlier that one of the ironys is at one time
you would be producing one part of the factory yeah played a steel plate the famous story which
goes back is that one side of the business made uh im impenetrable armor plating and the other side
of the business made armor-piercing ammunition which could be us any armor plating which is quite
is a bit of an irony but your own personal story is quite an interesting one i mean you started
working here on the on the shop floor at the age of 17 and now you're the managing director yeah so
i started as an apprentice um about 17 and i fell into engineering i should save through my father
telling me that would be a good career and if i'm honest i didn't really know much about engineering
and you do now so yeah well hopefully yeah so i started 17 on shop floors in the machine shops and
then moved through various different production jobs and then got into management at 23-24
i was lucky to became the youngest director um in the history of forge masters at 29 no at 30 sorry
and then managing director at 35 so quite a quick a quick rise but uh it's still very hands-on
yeah very young disappeared into the boardroom no not yet anyway
i still get involved in trying to see what's happening out there it's and it's exciting
it's nice to see and get back involved at lads and there's always um an engineering challenge
be it on production beyond maintenance there's always something going on which everybody's always
everybody's always involved in if you want to have a look if you think you've got something to say
so everybody's always engaged so it's always good to get out and have a walk around and see what's
happening let me ask you finally we've talked about what's happened here since the year 1805
what about the future i mean how do things look uh you know for the future security of this business
until the areas in which you'll be operating we're all about big big fortunes big castings and
machining and treatments and everything in terms of the quality products and the determination
to keep ahead on the technology front do you think it's that which is going to make sure you
survive even though in terms of volume you're a small operator like if i said the chinese
yep i think that's exactly where we are well ever we'll we will keep in front of technology while
we keep pushing technologies forward and keep advancing at the rate that we are advancing out
in terms of our technology side we will stay ahead of the game we will be the business that
some of the main players need to come to because of our quality and because of our capabilities
that we can offer which are diverse from everybody else thank you very much indeed thank you you