Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 April 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 77) – Plans of Steel”

Continuing on from the articles on industrial expansion in Cork in the late 1950s, Haulbowline Steel Holdings was also a major player in Ireland’s necklace of native industries.  The site on Haulbowline Island was once a British naval dockyard where its docks were used for the loading and discharge of ships. In the Irish Free State the site belonged to the Board of Public Works but was developed by Hammond Lane Foundry in 1937.

The Irish Press newspaper on 23 September 1937 reported that 2,500 tons of plant and dismantled buildings, part of a steel mill at Charleroi, Belgium were landed on Haulbowline Island for the works started there by the Hammond Lane Foundry Co. Ltd., Dublin. The Company had bought the whole mill. The new Haulbowline mill was to supply the Irish Free State’s needs and was to export steel as well.  Scrap being exported was to be diverted to the island for processing and pig-iron and coal were to be imported to the site. At the start they planned to employ 1,000 in all. In June 1938, a new company Irish Steel Ltd was formed. When opened on 24 August 1939, the journalist of the Irish Press commented that the mills were designed to produce merchant steel, sheet steel and tinplate. The black sheet steel was for the manufacture of numerous items in everyday use, galvanising for roofing and fencing, etc.

There was also the deep-water basin and dock accommodation, which enabled the maximum advantage to be taken of the cheapest method of raw material to, and of the finished product from, the mills. Mr Ludvig  Loewy, noted by the press, as one of the most eminent authorities in the world, was chief designer of the mills. The formal opening was made by Seán Lemass, TD, Minister for Industry and Commerce. Remarking on Ireland’s industrial expansion he noted; “It is true to say that in everything we plan nowadays we have to keep an eye on the situation in Europe, which appears to have developed to a point where only a miracle will avert war. A European war will, of course, stop our industrial expansion at once”. The Irish Press on 25 August 1939 also listed that the leading industrial nations in the world had their own steel plants – the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Poland, India, Canada and Spain. The reporter argued of the importance of a steel plant for a country and the need for self-sufficiency; “it is universally recognised in industrial and commercial circles that an efficient steel industry contributes as no industry is capable of doing to the prosperity and economic progress of a country.”

Fast forward to 8 January 1947, and Irish Steel Ltd were placed in the hands of a receiver. Shortly afterwards the Irish government took it over a going concern. Between 1947 and 1957, the annual production of ingots and bars quadrupled – the increase was particularly marked during 1956 and 1957. Steel was sold competitively in New Zealand, India, South Africa, Finland, Greece, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guinea, the Philippines, Cyprus, Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait and Malaya.

During the post war years of the 1950s a distinctive feature of the steel industry throughout the world was the rapid expansion of productive capacity. World production of crude steel was estimated to be at the rate of 300 million tons as compared with 190 million tons in 1950. The increase in productive capacity was necessitated by the increase in steel consumption per head of population in every country. In USA the apparent consumption per head of population in 1955 was more than double that in 1937/38. In the United Kingdom and Germany the increase was of the order of 60 per cent as both countries developed and expanded their country’s economy.  The annual consumption of merchant steel products in Ireland averaged about 44,000 tons. The use of Haulbowline Mills was to meet those tonnage needs.

By September 1958, an extensive programme of expansion of the operations of Irish Steel Holdings was proposed incorporating an additional 200 workers on top of 450 workers. The development proposals comprised the expansion of its open hearth furnace capacity, the casting of large ingots, which were to be rolled in a new building into a wide range of finished and semi-finished sections, and the adaptation and mechanisation of existing steel making processes. These new ideas aimed to make the plant meet the requirements of a larger and more varied production especially in the manufacture of sheet steel from bars produced in the new mill. The construction contracts totalling £400,000 embraced the foundations required for the expansion of the existing steel works at Haulbowline and also the re-construction and extension of its Spencer Jetty for the increased traffic envisaged in the development scheme.  The Haulbowline Scheme was also part of a white paper – a five year plan – laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas by Seán Lemass, which would see additional capital expenditure being invested into agriculture, fisheries, industry, and telephones. The white paper was formally proposed in November 1958, envisaging a capital expenditure of £220million.

To be continued…

Caption:

737a. Haulbowline Island from Queenstown/ Cobh. c.1900 – pre Steel Mill been constructed on left of picture (source: Cork City Museum)