The former CEO of Sheffield Forgemasters has been awarded a CBE in the King’s 2025 New Year Honours list for services to the defence supply chain.
David Bond, who worked at the historic South Yorkshire engineering company from 2018, was instrumental in securing government recognition for its sovereign capabilities, which cemented its position as a vital asset for the UK defence programme.
In 2021, David led a management team which took the 200 plus year-old business from an employee shares-ownership model, into Ministry of Defence ownership – a three-year-long project which secured the company’s future and kick-started a significant investment programme.
Sir Tim Fraser, Chair at Sheffield Forgemasters, said: “We are absolutely delighted that David has received national recognition for his services to the UK Defence supply chain.
“He led the team at Sheffield Forgemasters for nearly six years, from a very difficult position when he joined, through to Government ownership and a much brighter future. We wish him and his family our hearty congratulations.”
David also worked to restructure the organisation from multiple businesses, operating under one parent company, to become ‘one Forgemasters’, with a new values and behaviours policy and a performance management system to measure those values and behaviours.
This included overhauling operations across the site to prioritise safe working, creation of a customer programmes team to ensure on-time delivery of components and better capitalising on customer relations, and embracing Industry 4.0 practices and systems.
Securing the company’s future has enabled a recapitalisation of the 85-acre site which will see a brand new 13,000 tonne open die Forging line and a 35,000m2 machining hall which will house some of the world’s largest, most advanced Vertical Turning Lathes.
David’s legacy also sees Sheffield Forgemasters manufacturing for the SSN-AUKUS submarine programme, which replaces the existing Astute-Class nuclear submarines, and re-starting gun-barrels manufacture for the UK defence programme after a 20-year hiatus.
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