Closure Date fixed for Denaby Factory

January 1963

South Yorkshire Times, 12 January 1963

Closure Date fixed for Denaby Factory.

Employees of the Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd, Westfalite factory, Denaby, were told by Dr J.Bell, Nobel division production director at a series of meetings yesterday (Thursday) that the factory will close at the end of September.

In April 1961 a preliminary announcement was made that the factory will be closing about two years from that date.

There are 20 members of staff at the factory the total number on thepayroll is 264, of whom 29 are men, 168 women over 18 years of age, and 67 girls aged between 15 and 18.

The following statement was issued from the Nobel division headquarters, Stevenston, yesterday:

“Electric detonators used with high explosive for blasting are assembled by hand at the Westfalite factory. New machines have now been developed to assemble electronic detonators, more safely, and more efficiently, and these machines are being installed at the company’s factory at Ardeer in Ayrshire, where most component parts with electric detonators are produced.

There has been a considerable reduction in demand for electric detonators, partly due to mechanisationof coal mining and partly because of local manufacture, which has started up in countries to which electric detonators were former exported. It is thus an economic necessity for manufacture be concentrated, and its efficiency improved.

Married Men.

“Married men on the payroll will be offered transfer to other factories of the company, andif they arewilling to accept such transfer, will be given a lodging allowance for six months as well as removal expenses for their families and household effects. Employees with three-year service or more will become redundant, will receive the resettlement allowance provided for in the company’s Protection of Employment Agreement and if they have service of five or more years also receivedex gratialump sum payments.

The management regrets the necessity to close a factory and is anxious to help those who are affected.During the rundown period, time off with pay will be allowed to thosewho havesecured interviews for otherwork.”

The works were established in 1899 for the manufacture of explosives. A few years laterowing totrade difficulties, production was almost at a standstill, and a Belgian company took over the premises, largely for the manufacture of gunpowder.

Four years later another English company under the Westfalite title, acquired the business, for the production of German explosives. Following another reorganisation in 1907. The title of the company was changed to the British Westfa lite limited.

In 1919 this company was involved in a merger with a much larger group of explosives manufacturers, and this group was ultimately one of the four combines which constituted the formation of the I.C.I. in 1926.

In recent years the nature of the product changed at Denaby, and efforts were concentrated upon the manufacturer of electric detonators for the Nobel division of ICI.

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