Bridon Ropes, also known as Bridon International Ltd is a manufacturing company in

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated i ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. I ...

that makes

wire rope Steel wire rope (right hand lang lay) Wire rope is several strands of metal wire twisted into a helix forming a composite '' rope'', in a pattern known as ''laid rope''. Larger diameter wire rope consists of multiple strands of such laid rope in ...

. It is now part of the

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

-based Bekaert company. The name Bridon originates from the concatenation or contraction of the words British and Doncaster; it is not a family name.

History

The company can trace its history in Doncaster back to 1789. It was formed in 1924 as British Ropes Limited. British Ropes Ltd was headquartered at 32

Cavendish Square Cavendish Square is a public garden square in Marylebone in the West End of London. It has a double-helix underground commercial car park. Its northern road forms ends of four streets: of Wigmore Street that runs to Portman Square in the mu ...

. British Ropes was state-owned. From the 1960s to 1980s, British Ropes headquarters was at Warmsworth Hall at Warmsworth, off the A630 near the B6376 junction. In 1974 it became known as Bridon; Bridon was the name of one of their brands of wire rope. In 1976 the company was turning over £243 million. In 1978 the company was registered on the Stock Exchange. Bridon and British Steel jointly owned the large Templeborough Rolling Mills; this is now the

Magna Science Adventure Centre Magna Science Adventure Centre is an educational visitor attraction, appealing primarily to children, located in Rotherham's former Templeborough steelworks. Location The site used to be home to the Steel, Peech and Tozer steel works (also k ...

; 40% of Templeborough's production went to Bridon. In 1991 its workforce was 5,400 which dropped to 4,000 at the end of 1993, and produced in 20 countries with 76 service centres; it was the world's biggest supplier of wire rope. In April 1993 it won a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement for its Brifen fencing.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York Prince Andrew, Duke of York, (Andrew Albert Christian Edward; born 19 February 1960) is a member of the British royal family. He is the younger brother of King Charles III and the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince ...

visited the site on 20 October 2011.

Ownership

In 1997 it was bought by FKI, who were bought by Melrose Industries in 2008. In 2014 it was bought by the

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board (french: Régime de retraite des enseignantes et des enseignants de l'Ontario) is an independent organization responsible for administering defined-benefit pensions for school teachers of the Canadian p ...

for £365 million. In December 2015 it merged with the Belgium wire rope company NV Bekaert SA.

Structure

It is headquartered in the south-west of Doncaster. It makes wire rope at four sites in the UK, and in Germany and the USA.

Products

It makes wire rope for bridges, cranes, elevators and mine shafts. It claims to be the only company in the world that makes wire rope from hot rolled steel. A brand of its wire rope is called Dyform; Dyform was introduced in the late 1960s as a seven-wire tendon for prestressed concrete construction. Their wire rope has been made widespread for

prestressed concrete Prestressed concrete is a form of concrete used in construction. It is substantially "prestressed" (Compression (physics), compressed) during production, in a manner that strengthens it against tensile forces which will exist when in service. Post ...

bridges; the BRIDON brand is found on many prestressed concrete bridges around the world.

References

External links