Special Melted Products has secured a £28.5m working capital facility and £2.2m in acquisition funding from Lloyds Bank to advance Project Vulcan, a growth programme targeting £300m in annual revenue by 2031 and 150 new skilled jobs.

Special Melted Products (SMP) is a Sheffield-based manufacturer of nickel-based superalloys and speciality steels for the aerospace, energy and civil nuclear sectors, tracing its production lineage to the 19th-century discovery of stainless steel. It generates around £100m in annual revenue and employs 260 people across two sites, supplying high-integrity components to clients including Rolls-Royce.

Lloyds Bank is the funding partner behind Project Vulcan, providing the working capital facility alongside separate funding for SMP's acquisition of a 31,000 sq ft industrial building near its existing operations.

Advisors: None mentioned.

Project Vulcan sits squarely inside the UK's push to reshore strategically sensitive aerospace and defence manufacturing currently dominated by US suppliers of nickel-based superalloys. The structural driver is supply chain resilience, a theme UK Steel and industry bodies have pressed government on amid concerns over foundation industries' exposure to overseas dependency and input costs.

For SMP, the timing reflects growing defence and aerospace order books and a UK industrial strategy oriented towards sovereign capability in critical materials. Establishing large-scale forging domestically reduces reliance on US-based supply for components used in jet engine hot sections, a capability gap reported as long-standing in UK advanced manufacturing coverage.

For Lloyds, backing a 260-employee firm with an established Rolls-Royce client base and a credible path to tripling revenue fits a broader pattern of regional banks financing mid-market manufacturers through capital-intensive capacity build-outs rather than pure working capital lending, a shift detailed in regional business press coverage of the deal.

The wider signal for the sector is that superalloy and forging capacity is becoming a live domestic investment category, not just a policy aspiration, as reshoring commitments move from strategy documents into funded, building-phase projects, with local reporting framing this as part of a wider resurgence in Sheffield's specialist metals cluster.

Source: TheBusinessDesk.com / Yorkshire Post / The Star / Insider Media / ADS Advance / Bdaily / PES Media