From the new Wembley stadium to football grounds of lower division clubs throughout the country - Wedge galvanizing plants have been involved in creating many of the best and most modern stadia in Britain. 

Galvanized steel is widely used in the construction of stands, roof supports, safety barriers, hand-rails, perimeter fencing and also for seat brackets and fixings on the terraces. At the Emirates Stadium in London – the home of Arsenal Football Club - it was even used in the water drainage system on the stadium roof.

Paul Robinson, Commercial Manager at Worksop Galvanizing, estimates the Worksop plant has galvanized steel for 35-40 completely new football grounds or new stands at existing grounds over the past 15 years.

“The move towards building many of these new grounds was instigated by the Lord Justice Taylor Report in the early 1990s, following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

“The report recommended that clubs in the top two divisions should have all-seater stadia, and now clubs in the bottom two leagues are going that way as well.

“This kick-started the building of brand new grounds because many of the clubs had grounds which were nearly 100 years old in some cases.”

Worksop Galvanizing, which has the largest galvanizing bath in the UK industry (21m long), was the logical choice to galvanize the large structural steel sections for many of these projects.

It has, to date, completed work for many of the best-known clubs in the land, including Newcastle United, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Derby County and Leeds United, as well as lower league teams such as Wrexham and Rochdale.

Other Wedge sites have also completed major contracts for new football stadia, including Scottish Galvanizers (Celtic, St Mirren etc), South East Galvanizers (Arsenal etc.) and B. E. Wedge which galvanized steel seat fixings for the massive new Wembley stadium.

In recent years, B. E. Wedge has also galvanized seating units for a variety of other national and international sporting venues, including Lord’s Cricket Ground, while Acrow Galvanizing galvanized new gates and other steelwork for the recently refurbished Ascot racecourse and Humber Galvanizing has been involved in a number of new rugby grounds.