Steelos After WWII

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Steelos After WWII: More cars and more fridges meant more steel. In 1955 Steelos invested again spending £4 million on a Hot Strip Mill to be built across the road from the Templeborough Melting Shop. This plant rolled wider steel sheet that could be used for making things like cars and refrigerators. The demand for consumer goods had risen dramatically after the Second World War and the company had carried out careful research and knew that there was a good market for this steel product in the UK. Sure enough the plant started operating in 1957 and was soon setting records for production. The steel slabs were delivered to the strip mill for processing by railway from the Templeborough Works across the Sheffield Road. The plant is still going today as Brinsworth Strip Mill and can be seen opposite Magna as you drive towards Sheffield.

The open hearth furnaces made excellent steel but the process took a long time, and ‘Operation SPEAR’ – Steel Peech Electric Arc Reorganisation – replaced them with six state-of-the-art Electric Arc Furnaces. The scheme heralded the end of the iconic ‘fourteen sisters’ that had been a dominant feature of the local skyline for forty years. When the last of the new furnaces was switched on in 1965, Templeborough’s Electric Melting Shop became the world’s largest electric steel plant. Once running they used as much electricity as the town of Rotherham itself!

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