Journey
Set up a basic metal production business
Learning path for new basic-metal producers — iron and steelworks, aluminium and other non-ferrous smelters and refiners, and iron, steel and non-ferrous foundries. Work out which rules apply, put a safe high-hazard production plant in place with its environmental and major-accident controls, meet the conformity rules for products you place on the market, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Producing basic metals is heavy, high-hazard industry, with duties that begin long before your first cast or coil leaves the plant. You have to keep your people safe around molten metal, fume, process gases and heavy plant. You also have to hold the environmental permit your installation needs and put major-accident controls in place at threshold. For the few nuclear-fuel sites, you also have to hold an ONR nuclear site licence first. This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out which rules apply through to checking you have everything in place.
It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
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Work out which regulations apply to you
Start by getting the picture right. Basic-metal production covers different businesses — an integrated steelworks, an aluminium smelter, a non-ferrous refinery, a jobbing foundry and a nuclear-fuel processor. They share a high-hazard workplace-safety foundation but then follow sharply different environmental, major-accident and licensing rules. Working this out first saves you from discovering a missed permit or licence late, when commissioning is already under way and expensive to fix. Use the router guide to find your route before you commit to anything.
Which basic metal manufacturing regulations apply to your business
Work out which rules apply to what you produce. A reference guide that routes you from the shared high-hazard workplace foundation to the right path — general production, placing products on the market, or the nuclear-fuel gateway.
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Put your safe production-plant foundations in place
Whatever you produce, these are the duties every basic-metal producer shares. Risk-assess molten-metal handling and hot work, control exposure to metal fume and respirable crystalline silica, and assess explosive atmospheres and flammable process gases under DSEAR. Keep your plant safeguarded under PUWER, manage manual handling of heavy metal, and carry out your fire risk assessment. Hold employers' liability insurance and meet your equality and data protection duties. On top of that, secure the environmental permit your installation needs and permit your radioactive sources and contaminated-scrap monitoring. At threshold, put your COMAH major-accident controls in place. If you process nuclear fuel, the ONR nuclear site licence is the gateway that comes first. Build all of this in from the start rather than retrofitting it.
Set up and run a safe metal production plant
The duties every basic-metal producer shares — general health and safety, COSHH (metal fume and silica), explosive atmospheres (DSEAR), work equipment (PUWER), manual handling, fire safety, insurance, equality and data protection — plus the environmental permits, COMAH major-accident controls and the ONR nuclear-fuel gateway.
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Meet the conformity rules for what you sell
If you place metal products on the market, they must be safe and carry the right conformity marking. Structural and reinforcing steel to a designated standard such as BS EN 1090 needs a declaration of performance and conformity marking (UKCA, or CE which is still accepted on the GB market). Anything outside a specific regime must still meet the general product safety duty. Most basic-metal output is a business-to-business intermediate, so check which regimes actually apply to what you place on the market. These are Great Britain market regimes — if you also supply Northern Ireland, check that position separately under the Windsor Framework. Design conformity in early, because it shapes your factory production control.
Place basic metal products on the GB market: conformity and marking
Get the conformity right on the products you sell — construction products and structural steel (BS EN 1090) and the residual general product safety duty — and apply the right conformity marking before the GB market.
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Verify you have covered everything
Once the moving parts are in motion, take a step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation — workplace, environmental, major-accident and product — is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before your first production campaign, and come back to it as your plant and product range change. Your obligations can shift as you add processes or cross a COMAH threshold.
Basic metal manufacturer: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything before your first production campaign and as your plant changes — the universal high-hazard workplace duties, the environmental, major-accident and nuclear gateways, and the conformity rules for products you place on the market.
You will also need the general business set-up duties
Alongside the sector-specific path above, every manufacturing business carries general obligations that are not unique to metal production but are just as compulsory. As you build the business you will also need to:
- protect the people who work for you — meet your workplace health and safety duties, including the COSHH assessments that bite hard around metal fume, silica and acid mists.
- hold employers' liability insurance once you take anyone on.
- handle personal data lawfully — most businesses must complete data protection registration with the ICO.
- meet your fire safety duties for the premises you work from, which matter wherever you carry out hot work or hold flammable process gases and combustible metal dusts.
These general duties run in parallel with the sector path rather than after it, so set them up as you establish the business. The safe production-plant spine and the compliance checklist bring the core duties together so you can confirm they are covered.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task. Work out which rules apply, and put a safe production plant in place with its environmental and major-accident controls. Then meet the conformity rules for what you sell and verify the lot. The ONR nuclear site licence is the gateway if you process nuclear fuel. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first production campaign onwards.