Above: In the meltshop at Sheffi eld Forgemasters, which has invested £2.4m in the upgrade of a giant electric arc furnace
Credit: Marisa Cashill © Johnson Press

In March, Boeing announced plans for its first factory in Europe. It is also close to the AMRC, but this time over the border, in Sheffield itself.

‘Boeing Sheffield’ will be a £40m site making parts for actuators – motors that move flaps – in wings that are then attached to 737s and 777s in its Seattle, Washington, headquarters. Due to open in late 2018, it is set to employ up to 50, but – again – the hope is it will receive more work and grow as new planes are developed.

For Boeing, it was the culmination of decades of involvement with the AMRC, which it helped found with the University of Sheffield in 1991. For South Yorkshire, it was the best start to the manufacturing year in recent times.

The AMRC continues to expand. Some 100 partners now pay for research but, in a new tack, it is ramping up engagement with SMEs to help them benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and make productivity gains through automation, big data, 3D printing and robot power.

AMRC researchers believe every SME will be using virtual reality (VR) headsets within five years, to read operating notes while working on machines and other tasks. Siemens boss Jürgen Maier’s ‘Made Smarter’ report urged faster adoption of Industry 4.0 to avoid losing work to other countries such as Germany.

Sheffield-based law firm Irwin Mitchell warned in a recent report that low skill and administrative posts will be cut, while there will be a 12 percent increase in managers, directors and senior officials. Yorkshire is among the regions where manufacturers have the highest number of at-risk occupations, it states.

Also on a regional level, devolution – or lack of it – was big news this year.
Some 15 of 20 councils campaigned for a Yorkshire-wide settlement, aiming to match the one in Manchester for economic clout and profile.

But the plan ignored Sheffield City Region’s deal, which had been agreed by its four councils and ratified in Parliament, and which the Government refused to unpick.
Without Sheffield or Rotherham, Wakefield or Harrogate – and several waverers – the ‘One Yorkshire’ dream appears to have stalled.

Richard Halstead, EEF membership engagement director for the North, said devolution was evidence of the Northern Powerhouse in action and the lack of a metro-mayor anywhere in Yorkshire was disappointing for manufacturers. “Metro-mayors look at the big picture and they are coming together and talking with their counterparts in the rest of the UK. It’s a shame other cities have missed out. It is a great opportunity to increase devolved funding to help the North grow.”

Mr Halstead also said an industrial strategy that recognised the importance of key industries was vital.

“The lack of one means there’s no direction. When Tata said it was going to sell its UK operations, an industrial strategy that stated steel was vital would have helped Government realise a crisis was coming and help it react,” he said.

ARCO – EXPERTS IN SAFETY

Arco is a Hull-based, fourthgeneration family-owned business with a heritage spanning over 132 years. As the UK’s leading safety company, Arco says the business is committed to keeping its customers safe at work and the quality of the products and services it supplies is critical. Arco is one of Hull’s largest employers with over 1,500 people employed in its Waverley Street Head Office and National Distribution Centre (NDC).

Leading the industry in product quality and assurance, Arco recently invested in its own independently accredited Product Assurance Laboratory so that it can test its own products as well as others on the market, to make sure they are fi t for purpose. Last year (2017) Arco completed substantial enhancements to its NDC, creating additional capacity and improved service and delivery capabilities. The signifi cant investment supports the company’s ambitious growth plans. Arco was a major partner for Hull UK City of Culture and designed and made the offi cial uniform for over 4,000 volunteers.

Arco’s core values are deeply embedded in the company’s purpose – keeping people safe at work. For further information, visit www.arco.co.uk

Forgemasters in Sheffield announced its first offshore oil contract in two years and unveiled a revamped electric arc furnace to ensure it continued to land large forgings and castings orders. William Cook, spent £20m upgrading facilities in Sheffield and Leeds. In Shfield it opened a £7m ‘precision foundry’, featuring a 3D printer making wax patterns of great complexity in one tenth of the time, for one tenth of the cost and with one tenth of the material compared to machining a shape from steel and aluminium. What used to cost £100,000 and take up to six months can now be done in a week.

The firm also unveiled a £15m refurbishment of its rail plant in Leeds and announced export orders to supply parts for bogies for Alstom’s light rail vehicles in Canada.

In Rotherham, metal powders specialist Metalysis was hailed a 4IR leader. Its patented electrolysis process can produce an infinite range of exotic alloys more cheaply, greener and faster than previous methods and in a powder form ideal for 3D printing.

It received £20m from investors in 2016, ploughed the money into its original base and a new building, both in Rotherham, and announced plans to make powder-producing ‘reactor’ units that can be installed in factories. After 12 years developing the process, chief executive Dr Dion Vaughan said that the company was now in “growth mode”.

Manufacturing now accounts for 20 percent of South Yorkshire’s economy; in Leeds it is 12 percent – but the sector is bigger in absolute terms of companies and people. There are 7,300 manufacturing and engineering businesses in Leeds City Region, employing approximately 144,000 people. It has particular capabilities in the engineering of pumps, gears, valves and turbos.

Earlier in 2017, Brighouse-based Blackhall Engineering made the world’s largest water gate valve for the US state of Texas. It weighed 100 tonnes, is 40ft high and has a lifespan of 100 years.

IDENTITY IS WELL ADVANCED

Rab Scott, AMRC head of digital, at Factory 2050
52% Yorkshire is home to two high value manufacturing Catapult centres: the AMRC and the Nuclear AMRC in Rotherham, which both offer ‘world-class equipment, expertise and collaborative opportunities’. A cluster of more than 100 companies has developed on and around the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, including Rolls-Royce, Boeing and McLaren. The AMP is on the site of the old Orgreave Coking Works.

Installation of a 75m Siemens blade at Queen Victorian Square, Hull, by artist Nayan Kulkarni
The small East Riding community of Brough suffered a shock when BAE Systems announced 400 staff – almost half of the 950-strong workforce at Brough Aerodrome – faced redundancy.
The site has a proud history of building Harriers and Typhoons but suffered after the company switched the bulk of production of the Hawk to Lancashire.
Meanwhile, in Hull, Siemens exhibited a 75m wind turbine blade in the city centre for 10 weeks as part of its City of Culture year. The company opened a £310m turbine blade factory at the city’s Alexandra Dock in December 2016 to service offshore wind farms. One of Siemens’ largest investments in manufacturing facilities worldwide, it is set to create 1,000 jobs.

Steel’s problems eased in 2017. Tata pulled back from the brink of selling all UK operations but went ahead with the sale of a ‘non-core’ division: Speciality Steels, which employs 1,700 in South Yorkshire. It was bought for £100m by Liberty House, which immediately unveiled plans to hire 300 people, spend £15m-a-year on equipment and staff, and re-start mothballed plant including an electric arc furnace and a ‘small bloom’ caster, both in Rotherham.

An upturn in Chinese demand for steel, tariffs on ‘dumped’ steel, a weak pound helping exports, steel prices 50 percent up on 2016 and tful signs of a recovery in oil and gas all helped Yorkshire firms this year.