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Materials Processing Institute | |
Industry | Advanced Materials, Low Carbon Energy and the circular economy |
Predecessor | Tata Steel, Teesside Laboratories |
Founded | 1945 |
Headquarters | Middlesbrough , United Kingdom |
Number of locations | 1 Middlesbrough |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Chris McDonald (CEO) Alan Scholes (CTO) Jonathan Neal (CFO) Dr. Gerard Stephens (Director, Operations) |
Services | Industrial Research and Development, Consultancy and Training |
Number of employees | 82 (2015) | 37 (2019) |
Website | www |
The Materials Processing Institute is a research centre serving organisations that work in advanced materials, low-carbon energy and the circular economy. The Institute is based in Tees Valley in the northeast of England.
The British Iron and Steel Research Association (BISRA), was formed in 1944 with headquarters in London, originally at 11 Park Lane, later moved to 24 Buckingham Gate. Satellite laboratories were formed much later to support the larger UK steel producing centres of Sheffield, Swansea, Teesside, and Battersea.
Following the second nationalisation of the UK Steel industry in 1967, BISRA became the R&D function of the newly formed British Steel Corporation.
Teesside Laboratories, later rebranded as Teesside Technology Centre, survived several rounds of R&D restructuring in which laboratories in Battersea and Swansea were ultimately closed.
In 2001, following the merger of British Steel with Koninklijke Hoogovens in 1999 (forming Corus Group PLC) Teesside Technology Centre, Welsh Laboratories and Swinden Technology Centre were to close to form a centralised UK Technology Centre. This was to mirror the single Dutch R&D site in IJmuiden. This centralisation attempt was backtracked but resulted in the closure of Welsh Laboratories and significant losses in numbers, knowledge and experience from both remaining centres.
In 2007, Tata Steel secured 100% of the Corus Group PLC shares, taking the company off the financial market.
In 2014, Tata Steel, already in the process of restructuring the UK arm of the European business, decided to also restructure UK R&D. Teesside Technology Centre and Swinden Technology Centre were to close with a new R&D Division being formed at Warwick Manufacturing Group. To avoid closure of the Teesside Laboratories and loss of the remaining technical process expertise in Coal & Coke, Oxygen Steelmaking, Continuous Casting and Long Products Rolling, members of the sites management team (Chris McDonald, Gareth Fletcher and Dr. Richard Curry) and the Tata Steel Process R&D Director (Dr. Simon Pike) were permitted to spin the site out as an independent research institute. [1]
The Materials Processing Institute was launched December 2014. [1]
The Materials Processing Institute works with steel organisations from across the UK, including Tata Steel, Liberty House Group and British Steel, while welcoming delegations from global, industry partners such as voestalpine AG, [2] thyssenkrupp, [3] ArcelorMittal and Sidenor.
The SME Technology Centre collaborates with NEPIC and Teesside University to support SMEs operating in Tees Valley and the wider North East region, through the Innovate Tees Valley and Tees Valley Business Start Up programmes, which are part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
In 2016, the Institute launched a commercial steel-making operation from its Normanton Steel plant, which has the capabilities to produce high carbon, high chrome steels. [4] [5] [6]
In 2017, Liberty House Group won regional funding to develop a process to manufacture powder feedstock for additive manufacturing processes. Liberty chose to house the plant within the Materials Processing Institute. [7] [8] [9]
The Materials Processing Institute is a member of UK Steel and was ratified, in October 2017, as an affiliated member of the World Steel Association, the international trade body for the iron and steel industry. [10]
In 2018, intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk joined several other small firms in renting office space at the Institute's site. The move and new office was officially launched by Redcar MP Anna Turley. [11]
The Materials Processing Institute consults in the fields of sourcing and blending, blast furnace processes, continuous caster tuning and physical modelling (water-based fluid scale modelling) of caster moulds. They have ventured into contemporary techniques such as computational fluid dynamics and process instrumentation but cutbacks in staff and investment have limited development in these areas.
The site hosts a c1960's manual control electric arc furnace and vacuum ladle arc furnace plus a mothballed single mould billet caster with mould section donated from the 1970s Stocksbridge vertical caster in early 2000s.
The 7t arc plant is often used to melt and sandcast waste turnings from local industries at low cost and quick turnaround. The plant has limited gas extraction facilities and can only process material with low volatile content and low poisonous metals etc.
The Materials Processing Institute houses Liberty Speciality Steel's Additive Manufacturing Steelmaking Powder Metallurgy Development Plant.
North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region has three current administrative levels below the region level in the region: combined authority, unitary authority or metropolitan borough, and civil parishes. They are also multiple divisions without administrative functions; ceremonial county, emergency services, built-up areas and historic county. The largest settlements in the region are Newcastle upon Tyne, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Gateshead, Darlington, Hartlepool and Durham.
The River Tees, in England, rises on the eastern slope of Cross Fell in the North Pennines and flows eastwards for 85 miles (137 km) to reach the North Sea between Hartlepool and Redcar near Middlesbrough. The modern day history of the river has been tied with the industries on Teesside in its lower reaches, where it has provided the means of import and export of goods to and from the North East England. The need for water further downstream also meant that reservoirs were built in the extreme upper reaches, such as Cow Green.
Middlesbrough is a town in the Middlesbrough unitary authority borough of North Yorkshire, England. The town lies near the mouth of the River Tees and north of the North York Moors National Park. The built-up area had a population of 148,215 at the 2021 UK census. It is the largest town of the wider Teesside area, which had a population of 376,633 in 2011.
Redcar and Cleveland is a unitary authority area with borough status in North Yorkshire, England.
Teesside is a built-up area around the River Tees in North East England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The area contains the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Billingham, Redcar, Thornaby-on-Tees, and Ingleby Barwick. Teesside's economy was once dominated by heavy manufacturing until deindustrialisation in the latter half of the 20th Century, alongside chemical production which continues to contribute significantly to Teesside's economy.
The Tees Valley is a combined authority area in North East England, around the lower River Tees. The area is not a geographical valley; the local term for the valley is Teesdale. The combined authority covers five council areas: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees.
Tata Steel Europe Ltd. was a steelmaking company headquartered in London, England, with its main operations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The company was created in 2007, when Tata Group took over the British-Dutch Corus Group.
Continuous casting, also called strand casting, is the process whereby molten metal is solidified into a "semifinished" billet, bloom, or slab for subsequent rolling in the finishing mills. Prior to the introduction of continuous casting in the 1950s, steel was poured into stationary molds to form ingots. Since then, "continuous casting" has evolved to achieve improved yield, quality, productivity and cost efficiency. It allows lower-cost production of metal sections with better quality, due to the inherently lower costs of continuous, standardised production of a product, as well as providing increased control over the process through automation. This process is used most frequently to cast steel. Aluminium and copper are also continuously cast.
The Teesside Steelworks was a large steelworks that formed a continuous stretch along the south bank of the River Tees from the towns of Middlesbrough to Redcar in North Yorkshire, England. At its height there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10-mile radius of the area. By the end of the 1970s there was only one left on Teesside. Opened in 1979 and located near the mouth of the River Tees, the Redcar blast furnace was the second largest in Europe.
Teesside Energy from Waste plant is a municipal waste incinerator and waste-to-energy power station, which provides 29.2 megawatts (MW) of electricity for the National Grid by burning 390,000 tonnes of household and commercial waste a year. It is located on the River Tees at Haverton Hill, east of Billingham in North East England. Developed and built by NEM, a subsidiary of Northumbrian Water, the initial plant replaced the Portrack Incinerator and opened in 1998. Subsequently, the facility became part of SITA, now Suez.
South Gare is an area of reclaimed land and breakwater on the southern side of the mouth of the River Tees in Redcar and Cleveland, England. It is accessed by taking the South Gare Road from Fisherman's Crossing at the western end of Tod Point Road in Warrenby.
Sir Harshad"Harry"Kumar Dharamshi Hansraj Bhadeshia is an Indian-British metallurgist and Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. In 2022 he joined Queen Mary University of London as Professor of Metallurgy.
The North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) is an economic cluster developed in accordance with Michael Porter's theories and strategies regarding industrial clusters. The chemistry-using sectors in North East England, where more than 1,400 businesses are headquartered in the industry's supply chain, formed this Process Industry Cluster. In the north-east of England, the industry employs approximately 35,000 direct workers and around 190,000 indirect workers, who collectively account for more than one-third of the area's industrial economy. Companies in the cluster produce 35% of the pharmaceuticals and 50% of the petrochemicals used in the UK, making this area the only net exporter of goods from the country. The area has more than £13 billion in exports.
Primetals Technologies Limited, is an engineering and plant construction company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with numerous locations worldwide. It serves clients in the metals industry, both the ferrous and the nonferrous metals sector. It was established as a joint venture between Siemens VAI Metals Technologies and Mitsubishi-Hitachi Metals Machinery in 2015. As of 2020, Primetals Technologies is a joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and partners.
Chris McDonald is an English chemical engineer and business executive with extensive experience in setting industrial policy. Since 2014, McDonald has been CEO of the Materials Processing Institute, after leading its divestment from Tata Steel.
British Steel Limited is a long steel products business founded in 2016 with assets acquired from Tata Steel Europe by Greybull Capital, then acquired by Jingye Group in 2020. The primary steel production site is Scunthorpe Steelworks, with rolling facilities at Skinningrove Steelworks, Teesside.
Redcar Bulk Terminal (RBT), also known as Redcar Ore Terminal, is a privately run dock at the mouth of the Tees Estuary in North Yorkshire, England. The port is used for the transhipment of coal and coke and for many years was the import dock for iron ore destined for Redcar Steelworks under British Steel Corporation, British Steel plc, Corus, Tata Steel Europe and Sahaviriya Steel Industries.