'˜Last throw of the dice' for steel firm after £6m investment

The William Cook group designs and manufactures complex components for blue chip customers in the energy, defence, rail and aerospace sectors.

Chairman Sir Andrew Cook said the Sheffield-based business had had to reinvent itself following a sharp decline in the oil and gas sector plus other traditional markets.

Turnover is currently £50-£60m, down from over £80m in 2013, while pre-tax profit hovers at about £2m.

Lord Coe, the double Olympic gold medallist and president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, returned to his home town of Sheffield today to officially open its new factory.

The investment sees the closure of its Station Road plant in Sheffield and the relocation of its 80-90 employees to the Parkway Avenue factory, doubling the number of employees at the site.

The new factory extension was created from old storage buildings on the site.

The investment in new machinery, including 3D printers and investment casting technology, means the firm, which exports 80 per cent of its products, can make traditional products much more efficiently and 3D printing speeds up the process of producing much larger precision components, cutting costs.

“If there is a future in first world manufacturing, it’s precision engineering,” Sir Andrew said. “Energy, aerospace and defence all need high precision components, which we could not make had we not put this investment in.

“Everything we make now can be made more efficiently and the breadth of market now served, is a market, if there is any market at all, which should grow.

“It’s a last throw of the dice. I’ve changed the focus of this group, in the 40-odd years I’ve been in charge of it, many times to cope with big market changes.”

Sir Andrew said he had safeguarded about 200 jobs with the investment and the new factory now needed time to “shake down” and “get going efficiently” before the business could grow.

“There will be growth. There has to be growth to justify the investment,” he added.

Sir Andrew said he anticipated particularly strong growth in the aerospace. Other growth areas include architectural structures and a host of energy-dependent componentry linked to the green campaign.

“There are all sorts of devices and gadgetry now which serve the global campaign to cut carbon emissions,” he said.

The Tory donor and pro-Remain activist said he’d already made the decision to invest in the new factory before last year’s EU referendum.

He added that he would have made the investment anyway “because the alternative, for this factory was to wither and die.”

“The reality is that the country is hell-bent on doing this but I don’t adjust my view,” he said. “I think it’s the wrong decision for the company and I think there will have to be some quite severe fracturing before common sense prevails.”

William Cook has been in Sheffield since the late 19th century and claims to be the only traditional large Sheffield manufacturer with its name still ‘over the shop’.

The company has recently recruited a dozen new apprentices - the biggest intake in recent history - to support its growth plans.

They are undergoing training at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham.

Lord Coe attended the official factory launch after William Cook Holdings supported the Sebastian Coe Charitable Foundation.