Journey
Set up a metal fabrication business
Learning path for new fabricated-metal manufacturers — structural steel fabricators, tank and vessel makers, jobbing platers, tool and fastener makers and architectural metalworkers. Work out which rules apply, put a safe workshop in place, meet the conformity rules for products you place on the market, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Fabricating metal for sale puts you among the more hazardous manufacturing trades, with duties that begin before your first product leaves the workshop. You have to keep your people safe around machinery, fume and heavy loads. You also have to get the conformity right on anything you place on the market. If you make weapons or explosives, you also have to hold the right licences 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 map shows 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. Fabricated metal covers very different businesses — a structural steel shop, a pressure-vessel maker, a jobbing plater and a firearms manufacturer share a workplace-safety foundation. But they then follow sharply different rules. Working this out first saves you from discovering a missed obligation late, when production is already running and expensive to fix. Use the router guide to find your route before you commit to anything.
Which fabricated metal manufacturing regulations apply to your business
Work out which rules apply to what you make. A reference guide that routes you from the shared workplace-safety foundation to the right path — general fabrication, placing products on the market, or making weapons and ammunition.
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Put your safe-workshop foundations in place
Whatever you make, this is the universal spine. Risk-assess the work and control exposure to welding fume, now classified as a carcinogen. It needs local exhaust ventilation and respiratory protection for all welding. Keep your machinery safeguarded under PUWER and manage manual handling of heavy steel. Carry out your fire risk assessment, hold employers' liability insurance and meet your equality and data protection duties. Get an environmental permit if you treat metal surfaces. Build this in from the start rather than retrofitting it.
Set up and run a safe metal fabrication workshop
The duties every metal fabricator shares — general health and safety, COSHH and welding-fume control, work equipment (PUWER), manual handling, fire safety, employers' liability insurance, equality, data protection and the environmental permit for surface treatment.
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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 steel to BS EN 1090 and other construction products need a declaration of performance and conformity marking (UKCA, or CE which is still accepted on the GB market). Boilers and pressure vessels follow the pressure-equipment regime. Anything outside a specific regime must still meet the general product safety duty. 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 fabricated metal products on the market: conformity and UKCA marking
Get the conformity right on the products you sell — construction products and structural steel (BS EN 1090), pressure equipment, 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 things are underway, review everything to confirm it holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before your first production run, and come back to it as your product range changes. Your obligations can shift as you add new products or processes.
Fabricated metal manufacturer: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything before your first production run and as your range changes — the universal workplace duties, the conformity rules for products you place on the market, and the controls for firearms and explosives if they apply.
If you make firearms, ammunition or explosives
Manufacturing weapons and ammunition (SIC 25.40) is a controlled activity with its own gateway. Before any manufacture begins you must be a registered firearms dealer, with section 5 authority for prohibited weapons. You must also hold an explosives manufacture and storage licence. Once your holdings cross the threshold, you must also meet the COMAH major-accident duties. These are Great Britain regimes, with separate legislation in Northern Ireland. If this is you, work through Manufacture weapons and ammunition alongside the safe-workshop spine.
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 metalworking 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 welding, plating and solvents.
- 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 store solvents 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-workshop 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 workshop in place. Meet the conformity rules for what you sell, and verify the lot. The firearms and explosives gateway is a separate branch if it applies to you. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first production run onwards.