Industry
Workington’s great tradition of steel making is founded upon the method of steel manufacturing which Henry Bessemer developed and which continues to be used in refined form today. Bessemer was eventually knighted for his endeavours and his legacy in the town is preserved by one of its main pubs being named after him.
The constituency’s proud industrial past is also carried forward today by diversification in recent decades into the sectors of footwear, plastics, electronics and fibre manufacturing.
The New Balance factory, situated at Flimby, makes a particularly telling contribution to the constituency continuing to maintain 40% employment in production and construction, well above the national average, despite deindustrialisation.
In July 2003 Tony hosted a highly successful function in the Houses of Parliament, attended by Rt. Hon. Richard Caborn, Minister for Sport, Jim Tompkins, New Balance President, to celebrate 21 years of New Balance production in the UK and Alistair Cameron, New Balance's European Regional Director.
Recent construction of a new 21,500 square foot warehouse has enabled production to increase to 25,000 pairs of New Balance training shoes a week—that’s around a ten-fold increase on production levels since the plant relocated to Flimby in 1991.
Tony told the House of Commons in June 2004 that: New Balance “has hugely increased its productivity through investment in training and in particular, in multi-skilling. So successful has it become, that it has been granted the Queen’s Award for Industry. Should we not learn from best practice?”
Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt MP responded by welcoming the successes of New Balance by saying:
“I am delighted, through [my hon. Friend] to add my congratulations to New Balance on its excellent achievement of the Queen’s Award for Industry. That is a superb example of how wrong people are to say that there is no future for British manufacturing.”
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