# Castmaster Roll – Attercliffe, Sheffield – December 2015



## mockney reject (Dec 11, 2015)

_The history_ 

Castmaster roll was a Sheffield based manufacturing firm that collapsed into administration with the loss of nearly 80 jobs and owing more than £500,000 to creditors. More than 140 local and national companies were owed money in the wake of the collapse of Castmaster Roll, based at the Eagle Foundry in Attercliffe. The business went into administration in October and as no new buyer could be found, all 78 workers have lost their jobs and the firm’s assets are being sold.

The firm had reported a trading loss for three years in a row before going into administration, including a £400,000 loss for the year ending January 31, 2014. Details included in the papers of administrator KPMG show £502,353 was owed to different companies at the time of administration.

The report said delayed and non-payment of invoices had put the company under ‘significant pressure from its creditors’ in the months prior to administration. A report also reveals that between KPMG’s appointment in October and December 5, it claimed costs of more than £324,000 for handling the administration.

KPMG said it is uncertain how much money – if any – will be returned to unsecured creditors as a sale of assets is yet to be concluded. Administrators have also said they are ‘continuing to assess the causes of the company’s failure’. It comes after Sheffield MP Clive Betts called for a ‘thorough investigation’ into how Castmaster Roll failed. The Sheffield South East MP said staff had told him the company appeared to be in good shape before it went into administration. He said: “I’m calling on the administrators to undertake a thorough investigation into how a company with good order books and more orders coming through the door has sadly managed to get into such difficulties.”

The firm produced iron and steel quality rolls, discs and sleeves for the manufacturing and food processing industry. The Stevenson Road site began making gas lamps more than a century ago and became a roll maker about 95 years ago. It was known as the Davy Roll Company but, after going into receivership, it was reborn as Castmaster Roll in the mid-2000s, taken over by new owner Mel Farrar.

_The Explore_

Myself and @slayaaaa popped into Sheffield to see a mate of mine who owns a garage there and thought we would check this out while we were there. He also gave us a tip off to another place I will post later. 
We had a bit of a cat an mouse game with some electricity board workers at getting in here but after a while got into the main building. There’s not much to see there and the building is pretty much stripped. The stocked up medical room is sadly long gone. The site itself is pretty typical of a British engineering works and of a fairly decent site.
We had a good climb up the cranes and a general mooch about the site, before heading off to our next destination.

Enjoy the pics


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## krela (Dec 11, 2015)

Great report of a sad story. I'm not seeing many assets to recover apart from the land.


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## UrbanX (Dec 11, 2015)

Great report! Thanks for sharing


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## smiler (Dec 11, 2015)

Interesting report backed up with good pics, Perfect, Thanks


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## flyboys90 (Dec 11, 2015)

Interesting info wonder what they will discover if anything!!As always a very thorough report with excellent shots.Thank you.


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## HughieD (Dec 11, 2015)

Great report of what is left. Shame about the medical room.


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## Sam Haltin (Dec 12, 2015)

Interesting write-up and good photos to go with it.


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## oldscrote (Dec 12, 2015)

Always nice to a gantry crane cab,I used to drive one in an iron foundry back in the early 70s


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## wappy (Dec 16, 2015)

great report was going to look at this other day but never got round to it.


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## UrbanP UK (Jan 24, 2016)

nice shots visited my self late last year did you not see the medical room or is it totally stripped ?


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## Dirus_Strictus (Jan 24, 2016)

flyboys90 said:


> Interesting info wonder what they will discover if anything!!



A classic case of local MP diving in feet first without knowing the facts and an indication why firms like KPMG have very fat bank balances! Sadly this is a case that has been oft repeated in the Engineering Manufacturing Industry and UK manufacturing in general - at some point in the cycle, producing the item costs more than the price attainable in a competitive market. Orders keep coming in, but the firm depends on its suppliers to turn a blind eye to late payment of invoices and pays off invoices as cash comes in. Eventually the suppliers get fed up and demand payment on time or with order - unfortunately customers do not pay cash with order, cash flow dries up and firm folds. It's a process that has been going on all my life, so why an MP should be so surprised? As a boy I saw the industry that my father was involved in get decimated by the textile factories in Hong Kong and my wife's family firm - Castleton Mills Armley finally closed when the major customer for their cloth, British Steel, went belly up and the Yorkshire mills could not compete with the Italian mills producing similar woollen (fire proof) cloth (basically because foreign factories were using modern looms and the looms in Yorkshire were of Victorian origins). Sadly in a global economy there is always somebody who will pay their workforce peanuts and make a fast buck at their employee's expense. Sadly these initial actions of paying very low wages do have a knock on effect on similar industries in other countries, who find their products becoming more and more uncompetitive.

As Krela states, the most valuable item on the books is probably the land. I doubt if the machinery was worth much more than scrap value (at a World record low presently) as firms like this do not tend to replace machinery, unless forced to do it because of breakdowns.


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## jester (Jan 30, 2016)

Great shots. takes me back


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