The Anonymous Widower

UK To Manufacture Gun Barrels For First Time In Ten Years

Yesterday, the UK government issued a press release, which is entitled Landmark UK-Germany Defence Agreement To Strengthen Our Security And Prosperity.

This is the sub-heading.

A landmark defence agreement will be signed by Defence Secretary John Healey MP and German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius in London today in a major moment for NATO, and European security and prosperity. It is the first-of-its-kind agreement between the UK and Germany on defence.

This introductory paragraph, lays down the tone and objectives of the agreement.

The signing of the Trinity House Agreement marks a fundamental shift in the UK’s relations with Germany and for European security. This agreement between Europe’s two biggest defence spenders will strengthen national security and economic growth in the face of growing Russian aggression and increasing threats.

It is a wide-ranging document, but in this post, I will concentrate on one topic; gun barrel manufacture, which is talked about in this paragraph.

The new partnership will help drive investment into the UK – with the agreement paving the way for a new artillery gun barrel factory to be opened in the UK, supporting more than 400 jobs and nearly half a billion-pounds boost to the British economy. The opening of the Rheinmetall factory will see the UK manufacture artillery gun barrels for the first time in 10 years, using British steel produced by Sheffield Forgemasters.

Will Putin and his supporters like being shot at by the best German-designed artillery pieces, built from the best Sheffield steel in a British factory?

When I first heard of this story I thought of one short and powerful six-letter word – energy.

Some may think, we have an idiotic energy policy, which is abandoning all our coal, gas and oil in favour of renewables.

• We shut our last coal-fired power station a couple of weeks ago and I showed pictures of the last station in Last Of The Many.
• Germany had fifty-eight coal-fired power stations in operation, as late as July 2023.
• Germany has also lost all its cheap Russian gas.
• Germany is also short of energy and what they’ve got is expensive.
• It’s also likely, that making the quality of gun barrels, that will annoy Putin and his ilk will need a lot of energy.

So would it be better to move operations that need a lot of expensive energy out of Germany?

I’ve also read somewhere, that Germany intends to retire coal-fired energy generation by the end of the decade.

The Germans are also developing two massive hydrogen projects to replace the coal and cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

• AquaVentus will harvest 10.3 GW of hydrogen from the North Sea and is described in this post called AquaVentus.
• H2ercules will distribute the hydrogen and is described in this post called H2ercules.

Is it more affordable for the Germans to move high energy manufacturing to the energy?

I wonder, if the deal will eventually be something like this.

• Rheinmetall will build the gun barrel factory, somewhere that is convenient for Sheffield and Germany and that has access to lots of energy.
• The energy will need to be green to ease Germany’s Chancellor’s problem with the Greens.
• Siemens recently built a train factory at Goole and surely that area of North Humberside and East Yorkshire with its large supplies of wind energy and hydrogen, backed up by the gas- and hydrogen-fired power stations at Keadby, would be a good location for an energy-consumptive business.
• Sheffield Forgemasters might even build a factory next door, to tap into the energy of the area and reduce transport costs of the gun barrel blanks.
• Sheffield Forgemasters’s steel may even come from British Steel at Scunthorpe. If British Steel make rails, that are good enough for German railways, then surely, it is a good enough starting material for German gun barrels.
• The Port of Immingham is nearby for import and export of components and finished products.
• All of the German activity in the area, will surely see flights develop to and from Germany at the nearby well-quipped Humberside Airport.
• Hull Trains, LNER and TransPennine Express will increase their services to Doncaster, Hull, Lincoln, London, Manchester and Sheffield.
• I wouldn’t be surprised to see a train service between London and Hull via Doncaster, a new Goole parkway station and Brough. It could even use battery-electric or hydrogen trains assembled by Siemens at their Goole factory.

Humberside could be becoming Little Germany, as it has what Germany needs – energy!

October 23, 2024 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Hydrogen, News, World | AquaVentus, British Steel, Coal, Coal-fired Power Stations, Germany, Gun Barrels, H2ercules, Hull Trains, Humberside Airport, Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, Keadby Power Stations, LNER, Port Of Immingham, Rheinmetall, Sheffield Forgemasters, TransPennine Express