BRITISH STEEL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1937, Page 14

BRITISH STEEL

AN EXPANSION SCHEME

The United Steel Companies, Ltd., are to spend £3,500,000 on new plant at the Appleby works of their Scunthorpe, Lines, branch, during the next few years (says "The Times").

This announcement was made by Sir Walter Benton Jones, chairman of the combine, at Scutnhorpe, after the opening of cottage homes for aged employees of the Appleby-Frodingham Company. The extension will be the most important development in the North Lincolnshire steel district since the war. All the other big steel concerns in the area are carrying out extensions to meet the demand for steel, and every plant is working at full i capacity. Although no official figures have been given, it is. believed that when the new steel plant is fully operating between 2000 and 3000 more men will be employed. Sir Walter Benton Jones said that the United Steel Companies, Limited, had decided to build a complete new iron and steel works next to the existing Appleby works. This would include four new blast furnaces, duplication of the Appleby steel'plant, new coke ovens, a new sintering plant, and new gas holder. The complete scheme would eventually cost £3,500,000, but at present they intended- to proceed with' only half of each 'unit, at a cost of £2,500,000. The contract for the new coke ovens would be let shortly, and, plans for the first two blast furnaces were already in preparation. One of . the steel furnaces was under construqti.on. When the full scheme was completed they would be able to turn out 1,000,000 tons of pig-iron and

1.000,000 tons of steel a.year at their Scunthorpe works.

The prosperity of the- iron and steel industry of this country, he added, was not exaggerated in any degree by armaments requirements.