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Chas. B. Pugh (Walsall) Ltd is a metal recycling business initiated by Charles Bryer Pugh in 1919 as a gas coke and breeze supplier to industries in the Black Country.
This was after Charles had been a furnace man in a Sheffield ironworks in his early days and Director & Secretary of a substantial foundry near Walsall.
The business grew acquiring offices and a canal side wharf in Wednesbury and offices and yard in Darlaston. Coke & Breeze came in by Pughs` own barges and by rail truck to Darlaston to be distributed by horse & cart to furnaces & many blacksmiths` hearths. The steel turnings & solid scrap produced in making bolts at the time needed clearing away so the customers of Chas. B. Pugh asked them to do this. Hence Pughs` entry into the scrap/recycling trade.
In 1935 the enterprise became a limited company and in due course, road trucks replaced the horses & carts. Foundry coke distribution became the predominant part of Pughs by tonnage over the next 30 years from the early 1950`s driven by the new chief Ted Pugh, son of Charles the founder.
Substantial expenditure from the early 1970`s saw 3 yards and heavy machinery producing iron & steel briquettes scrap for the foundries & steelworks for the next 15 years. Scrap processing and merchandising tonnages were now catching up with the coke tonnages.
The early to mid-1980`s saw industrial recession with many foundries and some steelworks closing. This precipitated Pughs “battening down the hatches” and homing in onto their single biggest yard, selling the briquetting equipment and entering the arena of scrap yielding demolition work. Big blocks of industry countrywide were closing for good and Chas. B. Pugh demolished a quantity of them.
Having finished any significant involvement in foundry coke sales in the mid-noughties Chas. B. Pugh now operates almost solely in metal recycling from its 2-acre yard on the outskirts of Darlaston.
