Former Sheffield Forgemasters’ boss awarded CBE

David Bond, Sheffield Forgemasters’ former CEO, has been awarded a CBE in the King’s 2025 New Year’s Honours list, for services to the defence supply chain. Mr Bond worked at Sheffield Forgemasters from 2018 and was instrumental in securing government recognition for the company's sovereign capabilities, which cemented its position as a vital asset for the UK defence programme.

In 2021, he led a management team which took the 200-plus year-old business from an employee shares-ownership model, into UK Ministry of Defence ownership – a three-year-long project which secured the company’s future and kick-started a significant investment programme.

Sir Tim Fraser, chair at Sheffield Forgemasters, said: “We are absolutely delighted that David has received national recognition for his services to the UK Defence supply chain. He led the team at Sheffield Forgemasters for nearly six years, from a very difficult position when he joined, through to Government ownership and a much brighter future. We wish him and his family our hearty congratulations.”

Mr Bond also worked to restructure the organisation from multiple businesses, operating under one parent company, to become ‘one Forgemasters’, with a new values and behaviours policy and a performance management system to measure them.

This included overhauling operations across the site to prioritise safe working, creation of a customer programmes team to ensure on-time delivery of components and better capitalising on customer relations, and embracing Industry 4.0 practices and systems.

Securing the company’s future has enabled a recapitalisation of the 85-acre site which will see a brand new 13,000-tonne open die forging line and a 35,000m² machining centre which will house some of the world’s largest, most advanced vertical turning lathes.

Mr Bond’s legacy also sees Sheffield Forgemasters manufacturing for the SSN-AUKUS submarine programme, which replaces the existing Astute-class nuclear submarines, and restarting the manufacture of gun barrels for the UK defence programme after a 20-year hiatus.