Lackenby Steelworks
England · Steelworks · March 2023
- Country
- England
- Type
- Steelworks
- Published
- March 2023
- Contributor
- UrbandonedTeam
- Videos
- 1
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History
Lackenby’s steel production was established in the early 1950s by Dorman Long. The company joined British Steel in 1967, when the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking plant was built as a replacement. Completed in 1971, the BOS plant was operated by British Steel until privatisation in 1988, then passed through companies including Corus and Tata before SSI bought Lackenby and Redcar in 2012. SSI entered liquidation in 2015, forcing both sites to close with the loss of 2,000 jobs. Molten pig iron produced at Redcar had been brought to Lackenby by rail and poured into converters, where it was mixed with scrap steel and oxygen at temperatures of 1,700 degrees Celsius. The steel was then sent to a nearby casting plant to be solidified and rolled into ingots. Demolition began in 2021 and ended in October 2022, when 1.6 tonnes of explosives brought down the remains of the BOS plant.