Sheffield Forgemasters, Britain’s premier specialist steel castings business, is set to cut about one in seven of its workforce. It is understood that Forgemasters, which makes specialist heavy duty steel fittings for the energy industry, will announce 100 redundancies among its 700 workers today.
The news comes in a week that Tata Steel announced 1,050 redundancies, mainly at its Port Talbot works in south Wales. The number of job cuts across the UK steel industry total more than 6,000 in the past six months.
The Forgemasters job losses come as part of a restructuring package, in which the workers that remain could be subject to contractual changes.
Forgemasters has been at the centre of a debate that steel producers should benefit from British infrastructure contracts.