[keithpeter]

"Take a trip to North Lanarkshire and you can still see the impact that the closing of Ravenscraig has had on the area."

Might be worth mentioning that Ravenscraig had a very up to date seamless stainless steel tube rolling mill and brand new blast furnaces just completed when it was closed.

Seamless stainless steel tubes with mapped stress patterns 30cm in diameter and a few metres long used to cost my project about £300 to £400 a pop then. When the facility closed, we had to source from specialist mills in the then West Germany. £2000+.

(I spent some time in Shotts and Paisley around that time)

[lostlogin]

That's dire. What did you use the pipes for? And was there the option for some private crowd to buy up any of the works? How did your company deal with this - I know materials aren't all the cost of a big job, but a 500% percent rise in material cost is pretty hard for anyone to absorb.

[keithpeter]

I needed a few of them. We paid.

Ravenscraig steel works was, er, rather large so buying it up would require very significant capital. The rest of the supply chain was being disrupted at the same time.