A brand new steel tube-making machine is taking shape at
Tata Steel’s Corby works as part of its site-wide £30 million development programme. The tube mill, which has been designed and built by leading Italian engineering company
Mair Research, has started to arrive in sections at the Northamptonshire site and will be installed by British company,
Rapid Response Solutions (RRS). The new ‘combination’ tube mill, which will replace two older machines, is due to be commissioned in October this year.
Gary Blackman, Tata Steel’s works manager at Corby, said: “This is a hugely exciting time for the site. The new tube mill will replace our old cold-formed tube mill and our 6in tube mill and has been years in the planning. It is the latest piece in the puzzle to transform Corby into a truly world-class ‘net zero’ steel tube-making facility.”
Claire Mellows, RRS Group’s business development director, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as the installation contractor for this project – one of the first new mills to be built for Tata Steel in the UK in decades. This project represents another chapter in RRS’s growth strategy, and we are thrilled to be working alongside the Tata Steel project team. We look forward to delivering the new tube mill on time, on budget and with safety as our absolute priority.”
Already the Tata Steel Corby site is benefitting from a new integrated warehouse facility and has replaced old inefficient gas-fired furnaces with electric induction furnaces in its stretch-reduction tube mill on the site’s journey to ‘net zero’.
Tata Steel also recently announced the sale of a redundant part of the site. The £12 million generated from the sale will be used for further developing its stores, workshops and offices.
Project Manager Nigel Chudley added: “I’d like to pay credit to local Corby company, MPB, whose work in completing the civil engineering work on site, has been superb. With parts of the new tube mill arriving daily, we are now looking forward to collaborating in a similar fashion with Rapid Response Solutions, with Mair, the original equipment manufacturer, also on-site to oversee the construction and commissioning.”