Forgemasters' trials raise hopes of nuclear contracts

The company was at the centre of a political storm earlier this year, when the coalition Government cancelled an 80m loan to the firm.

The loan, which had been approved by the previous Labour government, would have been used to help the firm make components for new nuclear power stations.

However, Vince Cable, the business secretary said the loan was unaffordable.

Last month, Mr Cable told MPs that the coalition had inherited a "very difficult" financial position and had to make early decisions on cuts.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Sheffield Forgemasters had cast a 160-tonne ingot after a year of work by the company's research and development facility, which is headed by Dr Jesus Talamantes-Silva.

Dr Talamantes-Silva said: "This process is an exciting development for Forgemasters and aims to reduce many of the costs and processes involved in manufacturing some of the critical forgings required by the power generation industry.

"We are in the early stages of refining the process of casting a hollow ingot, but the results so far are extremely promising with the first ingot now cast and stripped from the mould.

"We have other stages to go through before we can say that the process has been fully trialled, including destructive testing, to examine the material properties and structural characteristics of the ingot."

Sheffield Forgemasters has invested heavily in research and development since chief executive Graham Honeyman led a management buyout of the company in 2005.

The project to cast hollow ingots has the aim of enabling Forgemasters to produce cylindrical forgings, which are used for components such as transition cones in civil nuclear power steam generators and waste casks for spent nuclear fuel.

Dr Talamantes-Silva said that establishing the parameters for a casting of this kind was a complex job.