Steelwork contractor breaks with tradition as it plans growth strategy
Steelwork contractor Severfield says it will be targeting jobs as small as 100 tonnes in the coming years as its plots ways to increase its workloads.
The firm has traditionally focused on projects where the amount of steel used has been a minimum of 800 tonnes with some of its current schemes including the work to build a new stadium for Tottenham Hotspur and the Coal Drops Yard retail scheme (pictured) in King鈥檚 Cross.
But acting chief executive Alan Dunsmore said Severfield will now be eyeing jobs below the 800 tonnes figure and has set up a new business called Severfield Products and Processing to target this type of work.
The size of the UK structural steel market is around 1m tonnes 鈥� down from a 1.4m tonnes peak a decade ago 鈥� but Dunsmore said it was only bidding for around 300,000 tonnes of the current market.
鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at ways to grow,鈥� he added. 鈥淭here are hundreds of jobs that are between 100 and 600, 700 tonnes. It鈥檚 a large market on our doorstep that we鈥檙e not in.鈥�
The firm is rejigging its two North Yorkshire factories with steel fabrication being consolidated into its Dalton plant while its Sherburn plant will provide processed steel for the smaller jobs.
Severfield鈥檚 commercial work such as high-rise towers accounts for around 45% of its turnover and Dunsmore said this part of its workload was holding up with its traditional Lond