Page 9 - High Duty Alloys

High Duty Alloys Redditch Heritage

The expansion needed a big increase in manufacturing capacity and hence the so-called
"Shadow Factory" scheme was introduced. Many aircraft manufacturers acquired or had
new factories built and High Duty Alloys was to get shadow factories of its own. The search
for suitable sites ended at Distington, near Workington in Cumberland, and just to the
north of Redditch in Worcestershire along Windsor Road.

Redditch in 1985

Devereux had to fight hard to go ahead with his Redditch plans against some members of
the Ministry, but in truth there were many advantages. Because it was marshy the bare
land he wanted was cheap, but most importantly there was a major gas works available.
Heating metal for forging requires vast amounts of gas and a farsighted engineer at the
Redditch Gas Corporation, one C F Wentworth Renole, was willing to put in new gas
holders for the company thereby more than doubling his output. The holders were for
many years sited on the opposite side of Windsor Road but this was not just a case of
building more holders. The gas production process had to be modernised and doubled in
size (no imports of natural gas in those days), skilled workers had to be trained and the
railway sidings and service had to be expanded to take the much greater loads of incoming
coal and outgoing coke (coke is/was the product of coal gas or town gas manufacture).

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