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Plant Size and Efficiency in the Steel Industry: an International Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Jonathan Aylen
Jonathan Aylen*
Affiliation:
University of Salford
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Extract

Steel is the basic material of industrialisation; and also of war. For Britain in the eighteenth century, iron and steel was the cornerstone of the industrial revolution; for Germany, a century later, the steel industry was the foundation of the militarism of Bismarck. Both countries supplied steel rails for America's westward expansion in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, before the emergence of America's own steel industry. Until the 1880s the British iron and steel industry was dominant. By the turn of the century both America and Germany had overtaken Britain as a steel producer. Today Britain has the smallest of the three industries. In 1979, a relatively good year, 21.5 million tonnes of crude steel were made in Britain, compared with 46 million in Germany and 123.3 in America.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 100 , May 1982 , pp. 65 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

(1)

This study was undertaken as part of the Institute's research programme on international comparisons of pro ductivity (see Productivity and Industrial Structure. by S. J. Prais, A. Daly, D. T. Jones and K. Wagner, Cambridge, 1982), and was supported in part by the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society to whom thanks are due.

Steelmakers and plant suppliers in Britain, Germany and America were exceptionally helpful. The author owes much to the patient advice of Mike Brown, Jane Francis, Dan Jones, Hugh McCormick and Peter Morris and the guidance of Professor Prais. The author alone is responsible for the final draft.

References

[1]For convenience we refer to West Germany as Germany and the United States of America as America throughout.Google Scholar
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[4]Including Krupp Stahl at Duisburg-Rheinhausen, Mannesmann Hüttenwerke at Duisburg-Huckingen and the huge Thyssen complex in North Duisburg.Google Scholar
[5]34 per cent in 1979, compared with 25 per cent in America and 14 per cent in Germany.Google Scholar
[6]Including Manchester Steel at Beswick, Manchester and Bidston, Merseyside and Sheerness Steel in Kent.Google Scholar
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