British Steel takes on 17 apprentices at Teesside and Skinningrove mills
Seventeen apprentices from Teesside and Skinningrove will start their careers with British Steel next month, taking up electrical, mechanical and structural engineering roles at the company's Northern mills.
They form part of a wider intake of 70 apprentices and graduates joining the business in September, following a recruitment campaign that attracted more than 1,000 applications from across the UK.
Training route
The Teesside and Skinningrove recruits will begin their training with TTE in partnership with Middlesbrough College Group before moving on site to gain hands-on experience within the business.
Alongside them, British Steel is welcoming 36 apprentices at its Scunthorpe site, one at its research and development centre in Sheffield, and 16 graduates across engineering, manufacturing, technical, commercial, finance and IT. The graduate cohort is the first since 2022, following the relaunch of the company's graduate programme this year. Earlier in the year the company reopened its Scunthorpe apprentice training centre.
Why it matters locally
The number is small against the scale of the local labour market, but the disciplines matter. Electrical, mechanical and structural engineering apprenticeships feed the same skills pool that construction and building services draw from, and heavy industry has historically been the training ground for a good share of the region's electrical contractors and fabricators.
The context is a persistent shortage of trained tradespeople across Teesside, with major energy and industrial projects competing for the same labour. More than 1,000 applications for 70 places also suggests demand for structured training routes is not the constraint; the number of employer-funded places is.
For smaller firms across the Teesside trades network, large industrial intakes are a double-edged development. They raise the overall standard and supply of qualified people locally, but they also compete directly for the same school leavers that subcontractors are trying to recruit into site-based apprenticeships.