Stephen Cater, of the University of Sheffield, shared the following glowing endorsement of Portland Works with us:
"At a time when Yorkshire Forward and Sheffield City Council are justifiably proud of the efforts they have made to establish a high technology metalworking cluster on the Advanced Manufacturing Park [AMP] at Orgreave, I am dismayed to find that they may be willing to extinguish an existing, and equally important centre of excellence in metalworking at Portland Works.
I am currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sheffield, studying the historical role of steel and developing new techniques for processing it. Nowhere else, not even at the university or the AMP, can I find the necessary skills required to help me in my work. I can only find them at Portland Works. I can take metal ingots there, have them indelibly engraved with reference numbers, have the same ingots worked down to strips, and then have those strips made into tools and cutting edges all under the same roof.
I am not the first to use their services: almost a hundred years ago Harry Brearley took his first stainless steel ingots there to have test cutlery manufactured. Does Sheffield really want to throw away such a heritage?"
Stephen Cater, University of Sheffield, Department of Materials Science and Engineering