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Developments centre on the hot and cold rolling mills – to deal with an increase in steelmaking capacity –and the Coatings One Department where a fourth continuous hot dip galvanising line has been installed.

The hot mill is extended, to accommodate new slab reheating furnaces, two additional stands in the finishing train, making seven, and new down coilers at the end of the mill, to produce 13 ton coils instead of five tons thus doubling capacity. A coil temper mill, to skin pass up to 4,000 tons of hot rolled strip a week, a 56 in. four high cold reduction reversing mill and new annealing furnaces have also been installed.

The new No.4 continuous hot dip galvanising line can galvanise strip up to 1220 mm wide operating at up to 40 metres a minute. Maximum coil size is 15 tons.

Under the direction of managing director, Reith Gray, experiments are continuing with different thicknesses of zinc and plastic for application to cold reduced strip.