ONE of North Wales’ oldest surviving industries has played a ‘prominent’ role in the community as it prepares to celebrate its 125th anniversary.

Tata Steel, formerly known as the Shotton Steelworks, is preparing to celebrate its 125th anniversary next month and has since had a prominent role in the coatings sector of the UK’s strip steel industry.

To celebrate the industry, whose ‘large manufacturing and warehouse buildings still dominate the skyline across the Dee Estuary’, a publication has been shared of a historical insight to the coating of strip steel in the UK.

The history is the work of Gordon Smith, of Mold, who was Information Services manager at the works for thirty years until early retirement in 1997 and author of the book: “A Century of Shotton Steel”, published in 1996.

Gordon said: “Many small- scale coating operations notably for galvanizing have always existed across the country but I have concentrated on those that have had a major impact on the sector.

“They were mainly among the 14 private steel companies nationalised in 1967 which included John Summers and Sons Limited, the original owners of Shotton Works.”

Gordon dedicated the history to the ‘ingenuity and endeavours’ of the thousands of men and women employed at the plant, the nationalised British Steel Corporation, British Steel plc, Corus Group and since 2007 by Tata Steel which has a 700-strong workforce on the 500-acre site on the banks of the River Dee.

In the book he records the process of coating iron with zinc and the major steps the company made in the area.

By 1909 John Summers and Sons were the largest manufacturers of galvanised steel sheets in the country, with an annual production of 160,000 tons and a workforce of 3,000.

World-wide demand for Summers’ products increased rapidly and exports mainly to India, Africa and South America accounted for 90 per cent. of the works’ production into the 1930s.

He also described how the practise of manhandling steel sheets was replaced in Deeside in the mid 1930s and by the 1970s, coating lines were computer- controlled, operated at high speed and achieved high levels of output.

Gordon said that while galvanizing has always been the core activity at Shotton, John Summers and Sons were pioneers of other strip steel coating processes such as electro zinc plating, plastic laminating and aluminium powder coating.

He added in terms of coated products, activity at Shotton peaked between 1989 and 2002 with six coil to coil coating lines producing over 900,000 tonnes of hot dip galvanized, electro plated and organic painted strip annually. It was one of the largest operations of its kind in the world and was regarded as the premier strip steel coatings centre in Europe.

In 1997, British Steel’s Coated Products Group, comprising six works with Shotton as the operational headquarters, delivered a record 1.5 million tonnes of coated steel sheet and strip.

All the changes over the last 20 years have left Shotton with a ‘high-volume galvanizing line and two Colorcoat® paint lines’.

He added: “The history shows that the Deeside works continues to be at the forefront of innovation within the coated steel sector with 13 new products developed since 2015, many offering customers unique properties.

“Recent innovations have included Europe’s first three-layer paint coating with a forty-year warranty, and energy and carbon saving roofing material for warehouses, offices and other buildings.”

Gordon’s Coated Steel history is now a web site on Google and hard copies have been deposited with the Flintshire County Archives office and the Tata Steel Records Centre at the works.