All Steels Trading is delighted to announce that we have recently completed the acquisition of Bromford Iron & Steel in West Bromwich.

With a history spanning well over 200 years, Bromford Iron & Steel has a widespread and highly positive reputation as being a leading producer of hot rolled long products. Its rolling mills currently employ 38 people at the Oldbury site where activity in iron and steel processing can be traced back as far as 1610. The company has benefitted from regular and extensive investment in new plant and technology to ensure that Bromford’s product quality, flexibility and ability to produce small tonnages notoriously matches world best standards.

As well as being a leading producer of hot rolled steel profiles for horseshoe manufacture, the company is a major supplier to other sectors including oil and gas and chain-making. In addition to Bromford’s standard and non-standard range of flat bars and sections, the business specialises in producing tailor made hot rolled profiles for countless applications that can eliminate time, labour and expensive machining costs. Bromford also provides a number of secondary steel processing services such as pickling and oiling, cold side straightening and heat treatment.

The exciting acquisition of Bromford Iron & Steel offers excellent synergy with All Steels Trading's other UK steel related businesses, but especially with our Wolverhampton-based Special Steel Sections re-rolling mill. As a bulk international steel trader, we have the critical mass to obtain extremely competitive raw materials prices and these price savings will inevitably enable Bromford to sustainably grow and fulfil capacity.

This major acquisition also confirms All Steels Trading's commitment to supporting and investing in traditional British industries, and safeguarding a significant number of UK jobs. We believe British companies in this industry sector are more than capable of not just supporting domestic steel requirements but successfully competing on the world stage – and the support of All Steels Trading and our duo of UK steel manufacturing companies will no doubt help Bromford to successfully continue to do just that.

Bromford's mill number 1 cooling bed is shown in the image displayed directly below.

Steel Business Briefing, Monday, 21 March 2011

Laurence McDougall and John Thompson, owners of UK steel companies All Steels Trading, Tomrods, Bradley Steels and Legg Brothers, have bought ball manufacturer Helipebs in conjunction with John Wraith, a former Caparo main board director.

McDougall, Thompson and Wraith will each own a third of the Gloucestershire-based company, which has been renamed The Steel Ball Company.

The Steel Ball Company manufactures forged steel balls from 25mm to 75mm in diameter for use as grinding media in mining, mining processing and cement manufacturing.  It can produce around 20,000 tonnes/year using hot rolled round bars as its raw material.  One of the company's main customers is a gold mine in Africa, Steel Business Briefing understands.

McDougall says The Steel Ball Company has good synergies with Legg Brothers, the special section re-rolling mill that is already a bulk buyer of round bar feedstock.

Steel Business Briefing - Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Two UK long products stockholders have joined forces to acquire another stockist based in the West Midlands area.

In the statement sent to Steel Business Briefing Yorkshire-based Tomrods Ltd. says that, together with specialist bright bar stockist and processor Boswell Steels, it has acquired Bradley Steels Ltd, a privately owned general steel stockholding business based in Ettingshall, West Midlands. No value for the deal has been disclosed.

The acquisition takes effect from 1 June 2008, with the former owner Eric Bradley providing a consultancy service to ensure the smooth handover of the business.

Bradley Steels will continue to operate as a major supplier of merchant bar and hollow sections to consumers and stockholders in the West Midlands region. Enlargement of the business is planned though additional warehousing, improved purchasing power and access to group stocks which include medium and heavy sections.

This continues a trend of selective expansion by bar and sections specialist Tomrods, which in 2006 established All Steels Trading Ltd, followed by the 2007 acquisition of Legg Brothers, a Midlands-based re-rolling mill.

Steel Business Briefing - 2007

Laurence McDougall and John Thompson, owners of UK steel companies All Steels Trading Ltd and Tomrods Ltd have bought Legg Brothers Ltd, which is a leading hot re-roller of special steel sections and profiles.

The Legg Brothers mill has a production capacity in the region of 10,000 tonnes per annum.  By using a combination of automated production and manual hand rolling, Legg Brothers has established a niche in the marketplace whereby it can produce small batches of special sizes in an extremely efficient manner.  By comparison, today’s modern, fully automated, continuous rolling mills are designed for large, high volume production runs where size changing and set up time is slow, expensive and therefore, prohibitive.

Legg Brothers humble beginnings date back to 1982 when two brothers (Mike Legg & Pat Legg) started their steel re-rolling enterprise in Sheffield with the aid of venture capitalist funding.  Since the incorporation of the Company the business has undergone several changes and moves to facilitate its expansion. Today it is located in the industrial heartlands of the UK – Ettingshall, West Midlands.

Whilst now under new ownership the business remains true to its motto “THE FAMILY BUSINESS THAT CARES”.