The Materials Processing Institute is a research centre serving organisations that work in advanced materials,

low-carbon energy Energy is sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Most definitions of sustainable energy include considerations of environmental aspects such as greenho ...

and the circular economy. The Institute is based in

Tees Valley Tees Valley is a mayoral combined authority and Local enterprise partnership area in northern England, around the River Tees. The area is not a geographical valley. The LEP was established in 2011 and the combined authority was establishe ...

in the northeast of England.

Background

The

British Iron and Steel Research Association The British Iron and Steel Research Association or BISRA, formed in 1944, was the research arm of the British steel industry. It had headquarters in London, originally at 11 Park Lane, later moved to 24 Buckingham Gate, with Laboratories in Shef ...

(BISRA), was formed in 1944 with headquarters in London, originally at 11

Park Lane Park Lane is a dual carriageway road in the City of Westminster in Central London. It is part of the London Inner Ring Road and runs from Hyde Park Corner in the south to Marble Arch in the north. It separates Hyde Park to the west from M ...

, later moved to 24

Buckingham Gate Buckingham Gate is a street in Westminster, London, England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celt ...

. Satellite laboratories were formed much later to support the larger UK steel producing centres of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

, Swansea,

Teesside Teesside () is a built-up area around the River Tees in the north of England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The name was initially used as a county borough in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Historically a hub for heavy manu ...

, and

Battersea Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Batte ...

. Following the second nationalisation of the UK Steel industry in 1967, BISRA became the R&D function of the newly formed

British Steel Corporation British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

. Teesside Laboratories, later rebranded as Teesside Technology Centre, survived several rounds of R&D restructuring in which laboratories in Battersea and Swansea were ultimately closed. In 2001, following the merger of British Steel with

Koninklijke Hoogovens Koninklijke Hoogovens known as Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken (KNHS) until 1996 or informally Hoogovens. was a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918. Since 2010, the plant is named Tata Steel IJmuiden. The IJmuiden steelwor ...

in 1999 (forming

Corus Group PLC Tata Steel Europe Ltd. (formerly Corus Group plc) was a steelmaking company headquartered in London, England, with its main operations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The company was created in 2007, when Tata Group took over the ...

) Teesside Technology Centre, Welsh Laboratories and Swinden Technology Centre were to close to form a centralised UK Technology Centre. This was to mirror the single Dutch R&D site in

IJmuiden n IJ (digraph) and that should remain the only places where they are used. > IJmuiden () is a port city in the Netherlands, Dutch province of North Holland. It is the main town in the municipality of Velsen which lies mainly to the south-e ...

. This centralisation attempt was backtracked but resulted in the closure of Welsh Laboratories and significant losses in numbers, knowledge and experience from both remaining centres. In 2007,

Tata Steel Tata Steel Limited is an Indian multinational steel-making company, based in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is a part of the Tata Group. Formerly known as Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited (TISCO), Tata ...

secured 100% of the Corus Group PLC shares, taking the company off the financial market. In 2014, Tata Steel, already in the process of restructuring the UK arm of the European business, decided to also restructure UK R&D. Teesside Technology Centre and Swinden Technology Centre were to close with a new R&D Division being formed at

Warwick Manufacturing Group WMG, University of Warwick (formerly Warwick Manufacturing Group), is a UK-based research and education group combining collaborative research and development with education programmes working in applied science, technology and engineering. An ...

. To avoid closure of the Teesside Laboratories and loss of the remaining technical process expertise in Coal & Coke, Oxygen Steelmaking, Continuous Casting and Long Products Rolling, members of the sites management team (Chris McDonald, Gareth Fletcher and Dr. Richard Curry) and the Tata Steel Process R&D Director (Dr. Simon Pike) were permitted to spin the site out as an independent research institute. The Materials Processing Institute was launched December 2014.

Present day

The Materials Processing Institute works with steel organisations from across the UK, including Tata Steel, Liberty House Group and British Steel, while welcoming delegations from global, industry partners such as voestalpine AG, thyssenkrupp, ArcelorMittal and Sidenor. The SME Technology Centre collaborates with NEPIC and Teesside University to support SMEs operating in Tees Valley and the wider North East region, through the Innovate Tees Valley and Tees Valley Business Start Up programmes, which are part funded by the

European Regional Development Fund The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds allocated by the European Union. Its purpose is to transfer money from richer regions (not countries), and invest it in the infrastructure and se ...

(ERDF). In 2016, the Institute launched a commercial steel-making operation from its Normanton Steel plant, which has the capabilities to produce high carbon, high chrome steels. In 2017,

Liberty House Group Liberty Steel Group Holdings UK Ltd (LHG), which is also referred to as Liberty House or Liberty House UK, is a British industrial and metals company founded in the United Kingdom in 1992 by industrialist Sanjeev Gupta. It is headquartered in ...

won regional funding to develop a process to manufacture powder feedstock for additive manufacturing processes. Liberty chose to house the plant within the Materials Processing Institute. The Materials Processing Institute is a member of UK Steel and was ratified, in October 2017, as an affiliated member of the

World Steel Association World Steel Association, often abbreviated as worldsteel, is the international trade body for the iron and steel industry. The association is one of the largest and most dynamic industry associations in the world, with members in every major ste ...

, the international trade body for the iron and steel industry. In 2018, intellectual property firm

Marks & Clerk Marks & Clerk is an international group of intellectual property service providers, encompassing patent attorneys, trade mark attorneys, lawyers and consultants. Including partners, it currently employs over 300 legal practitioners worldwide and ...

joined several other small firms in renting office space at the Institute's site. The move and new office was officially launched by

Redcar Redcar is a seaside town on the Yorkshire Coast in the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority in the county of North Yorkshire, England. It is located east of Middlesbrough. The Teesside built-up area's Redcar subdivision had a population of ...

Anna Turley Anna Catherine Turley (born 9 October 1978) is a British politician. She was the Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament (MP) for Redcar from 2015 until 2019. Turley was chair of the Co-operative Party from 8 June 2019 until December 2019. ...

Services

The Materials Processing Institute consults in the fields of sourcing and blending,

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric p ...

processes,

continuous caster Continuous casting, also called strand casting, is the process whereby molten metal is solidified into a "semifinished" billet, bloom, or slab for subsequent rolling in the finishing mills. Prior to the introduction of continuous casting in ...

tuning and physical modelling (water-based fluid scale modelling) of caster moulds. They have ventured into contemporary techniques such as

computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate t ...

and process instrumentation but cutbacks in staff and investment have limited development in these areas. The site hosts a c1960's manual control electric arc furnace and vacuum ladle arc furnace plus a mothballed single mould billet caster with mould section donated from the 1970s Stocksbridge vertical caster in early 2000s. The 7t arc plant is often used to melt and sandcast waste turnings from local industries at low cost and quick turnaround. The plant has limited gas extraction facilities and can only process material with low volatile content and low poisonous metals etc. The Materials Processing Institute houses Liberty Speciality Steel's Additive Manufacturing Steelmaking Powder Metallurgy Development Plant.

Specialist services

* SME Technology Centre: The Materials Processing Institute supports businesses throughout the North East of England through its SME Technology Centre. The Centre provides technical support, facilities support and business support services to companies from various sectors. There are also a number of SMEs operating from the Institute’s campus. * The Doctoral Academy: The Academy has formed relationships with industrial companies, including SMEs, universities and Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT).

References

{{Reflist 1945 establishments in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in Redcar and Cleveland Companies based in Middlesbrough Metallurgical industry of the United Kingdom Research institutes in North Yorkshire Scientific organizations established in 1945 Technology companies of the United Kingdom