Steel Engineering, a welder and fabricator of massive and complex metal structures that has been thriving near the banks of the White Cart in Renfrew for the past 88 years, is anticipating orders worth more than £100 million on the back of the global drive to produce renewable energy. The company is also positioning itself for what it believes will be Scotland’s next engineering boom.

David Maxwell, the company’s managing director and co-owner, said: “From 2013 onwards, fabrication yards up and down the country — from Nigg in Easter Ross, and Ardersier down through Methil, Burntisland and down to all the yards in Tyneside and Liverpool — will be working full-out to meet the demands for renewable and ‘clean’ energy. We employ about 120 workers now but, over the next five years, we expect to double that number, maybe even triple it.”

Mr Maxwell, a welder who trained at the William Arrol works in the east end of Glasgow and moved into the fabrication business during the North Sea oil boom of the 1970s, added: “There has been the perception — I think probably because of the demise of the old shipyards on the Clyde — that heavy industry in Scotland has died off and its skills are no longer needed. That is definitely not true, and now things are swinging in the other direction — and in a very big way.”

The rapid development of offshore wind capacity, which is central to the delivery of the UK’s share of the EU target of 20% renewable energy by 2020, is anticipated to bring major sources of business for Steel Engineering over the next decade. A number of large contracts from these sectors have already begun to materialise for the company. It recently won a £2 million order — the latest of nine such contracts — to manufacture and deliver a 600-tonne carousel system for laying cables on the sea-bed; this will eventually connect marine wind farms to the power grid. The company is also hoping to clinch orders for the fabrication of the so-called ‘jackets’ that secure offshore turbines to the sea-bed.

Elsewhere in the energy sector, Steel Engineering recently won a £5 million order from energy company E.on and Doosan Babcock to manufacture a ‘selective catalytic reactor’ for Ratcliffe power station in Nottinghamshire, which will become the first in the UK to modify its coal-fired boilers to significantly cut emissions in keeping with European Commission guidelines. Mr Maxwell said the company was hoping to strike similar deals with Scottish Power-owned Longannet power station in Fife, Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire and at the giant coal-fired Drax power station in North Yorkshire.

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