The Teesside Steelworks was a large steelworks that formed a continuous stretch along the south bank of the River Tees from the towns of

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

to Redcar in

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of ...

, England. At its height there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10-mile radius of the area. By the end of the 1970s there was only one left on Teesside. Opened in 1979 and located near the mouth of the River Tees, the Redcar blast furnace was the second largest in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. The majority of the steelworks, including the Redcar blast furnace, Redcar and South Bank

coke oven Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ...

s and the BOS plant at Lackenby closed in 2015. The Teesside Beam Mill and some support services still operate at the Lackenby part of the site. On 1 October 2022, the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) Plant at Lackenby was demolished in one of the largest single explosive demolition operations in the country in 75 years.

History

;1875 Steel production on Teesside begins when Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd, formerly Bolckow, Vaughan, opens the Cleveland Steelworks in Middlesbrough. Using the

Bessemer process The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation ...

, the works have three blast furnaces. ;1876 Albert John Dorman enters into a partnership with Albert de Lande Long taking over the West Marsh Ironworks in Middlesbrough. Dorman Long is founded. ;1879 Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd. acquire the Southbank Steelworks. The firm is also persuaded by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas to adopt the process which he and his cousin

Percy Gilchrist Percy Carlyle Gilchrist FRS (27 December 1851 – 16 December 1935) was a British chemist and metallurgist. Life Gilchrist was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist and studied at Felsted and the Royal School of ...

developed. This allows the use of local ironstone which had a high phosphorus content. Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd were already well established producers of Iron owning many Ironworks and furnaces and were seen as the driving force behind the rapid expansion of Middlesbrough or "Ironopolis" and Great Britain's leading producer of pig iron. ;1889 Dorman Long is registered enabling it to take over the business from the firm of the same name. The firm has acquired the Brittania works in Middlesbrough. ;1899 Dorman Long builds a new steel works at the Clarence works in a joint venture with Bell Brothers. ;1900 Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd acquire the Clay Lane works and shift production from Iron to steel, owning 21 of the 91 blast furnaces in the Cleveland area and become the largest producers of steel in Great Britain and possibly the world. ;1902 The first integrated steelworks is built at Cargo Fleet by Dorman Long who also acquire the other half of Bell brothers. ;1905 Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd produce 820,000 tons of pig iron which is equivalent to 8.5% of the entire country's total output. ;1914 Dorman Long now has a workforce of around 20,000 and is one of the dominant producers of steel in Britain and in Europe. ;1917 Dorman Long builds a new blast furnace at Redcar with a cost of £5.4 million. Some of the steel produced here, along with steel from the Brittania and Cargo Fleet steelworks, is used to build structures including the

Sydney Harbour Bridge The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge in Sydney, spanning Port Jackson, Sydney Harbour from the Sydney central business district, central business district (CBD) to the North Shore (Sydney), North Shore. The view of the bridg ...

Tyne Bridge The Tyne Bridge is a through arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson, who later designed the Forth Road Bridge, ...

and the

Auckland Harbour Bridge The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane motorway bridge over the Waitematā Harbour in Auckland, New Zealand. It joins St Marys Bay on the Auckland city side with Northcote on the North Shore side. It is part of State Highway 1 and th ...

. ;1918 Dorman Long opens the new Cleveland works. ;1922 Dorman Long wins the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The majority of the steel used in its construction is produced by Dorman long's Bridge and Constructional Works division in Middlesbrough. ;1923 Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd acquire Redpath, Brown & Co, manufacturers of structural steel. ;1924 Dorman Long wins the contract to build the

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

. ;1929 Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd. are effectively bankrupt and is forced into a takeover by Dorman Long who by this point is also struggling financially. ;1946 The Lackenby development is built by Dorman Long between the Redcar and Cleveland Works. ;1967 Dorman Long is absorbed into the newly created nationalised company,

British Steel Corporation British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

. ;1979 New blast furnace opens at the former Redcar site using the open hearth process. It is the second largest of its kind in Europe and Teesside's sole remaining blast furnace. ;1988 British Steel is privatised to form British Steel plc. ;1999 British Steel plc merged with

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-based steel maker

Koninklijke Hoogovens Koninklijke Hoogovens known as Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken (KNHS) until 1996 or informally Hoogovens. was a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918. Since 2010, the plant is named Tata Steel IJmuiden. The IJmuiden steelwor ...

to form

Corus Group Corus may refer to: Places *Çörüş, Gazipaşa, a village in Antalya Province, Turkey Facilities and structures * Corus Quay, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; an office tower Fictional locations * Corus, a fictional world that is the setting for the ...

. Corus utilised the site for

basic oxygen steelmaking Basic oxygen steelmaking (BOS, BOP, BOF, or OSM), also known as Linz-Donawitz steelmaking or the oxygen converter processBrock and Elzinga, p. 50. is a method of primary steelmaking in which carbon-rich molten pig iron is made into steel. Blowin ...

, using

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

produced at the company's Redcar blast furnace. ;2003 Corus announce that the production at Teesside Cast Products (TCP) as a surplus to its needs. ;2007 Corus is bought by

Tata Steel Tata Steel Limited is an Indian multinational steel-making company, based in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is a part of the Tata Group. Formerly known as Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited (TISCO), Tata S ...

. ;2009 Corus announced partial mothballing of the Teesside blast furnace. Approx. 1,700 jobs eliminated. To help the workers, a Corus Response Group was formed which developed a comprehensive package of support. This plan was in place over the past 10 months of announcement and included employment experts on site from January 2010. Support was put in place to help affected workers with individual sessions to update CVs, highlight job opportunities and look at retraining options. The response group was also supposed to work with the Teesside Cast Products function to offer similar support.

SSI: 2012–2015

On 24 February 2011, the steelworks was purchased by Thai-based

Sahaviriya Steel Industries Sahaviriya Steel Industries PCL or simply SSI ( th, บริษัท สหวิริยาสตีลอินดัสตรี จำกัด (มหาชน)) is a Thai Multinational corporation, Multinational Steel-making company headq ...

(SSI) at $469 million. The acquisition was expected to create more than 800 jobs on top of the existing workforce of 700 and the plant was officially reopened 15 April 2012. 18 September 2015, production paused due to the decline in steel prices. 28 September 2015, plant "mothballed" again amid poor steel trading conditions across the world and a drop in steel prices. 2 October, SSI UK enter into liquidation. 12 October 2015 the receiver announced there was no realistic prospect of finding a buyer. The coke ovens are scheduled for extinguishing.

British Steel: 2016–2019

The remainder of the site still operational ( Teesside Beam Mill and ancillary support services at Lackenby and the deep-water bulk handling terminal), was sold by Tata Steel to investment firm

Greybull Capital Greybull Capital LLP is a private investment company that specialises in medium- to long-term investments in UK-based companies. It was incorporated as a limited liability partnership in April 2010. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 200 ...

on 1 June 2016. As part of the deal, the historic British Steel name was resurrected. The new company includes the UK sites of

Skinningrove Skinningrove is a village in Redcar and Cleveland, North Yorkshire, England. Its name is of Old Norse etymology and is thought to mean ''skinners' grove or pit''. History The village had an agricultural and fishing economy until the opening ...

and Scunthorpe as well as the Hayange rail plant in northern France.

Insolvency of British Steel 2019–Present

In May 2019 British Steel collapsed and was taken over by the UK Insolvency Service, and was later purchased in March 2020 by Jingye Group, who agreed to save the remaining jobs by modernising the steelworks.

Environmental aspects

The closure of the steelworks, coupled with the running down of many coal-fired power stations and a UK Government carbon-tax, led to a 6% reduction in carbon emissions from the United Kingdom in 2016.

Transport

The site is situated alongside the A66 and A1085 dual carriageways. Main access is via the Lackenby and Redcar entrances, situated on the A1085. The site is adjacent to

Teesport Teesport is a large sea port located in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, Northern England. Owned by PD Ports, it is located approximately inland from the North Sea and east of Middl ...

that was used for iron ore, coal, and other raw material imports, and steel exports. The site was served by the

Redcar British Steel railway station Redcar British Steel (also known as British Steel Redcar) is a "mothballed" railway station on the Tees Valley Line, which runs between and via . The station, situated east of Middlesbrough, served the Teesside Steelworks, Redcar and Clevela ...

, which opened on 19 June 1978. Northern discontinued service to the station in December 2019, prior to this the station (owned by

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

), was surrounded by private land, which prevented any public access to or from the station.

References

External links

{{coord, 54.5924, -1.1352, dim:2000_region:GB, display=title Tata Steel Europe Buildings and structures in Redcar and Cleveland Buildings and structures in North Yorkshire Ironworks and steelworks in England Redcar