The plant was set up in the 1950s by the Dorman Long company and began full production in 1958, making beams for building projects.

The Teesside Beam Mill[note 1] was developed after the Second World War, on a strip of land at Lackenby, sandwiched between the Middlesbrough to Redcar railway line to the north, and the A1085 trunk road to the south.

[11] By the 21st century, the beam mill was the only plant in the United Kingdom capable of producing large steel sections for the building and construction industry.

[14] By the early 2000s, the plant was taking semi-finished steel from either the Teesside or Scunthorpe Steelworks, melting it at a temperature of 1,300 °C (2,370 °F), to make I-beams (girders) for the construction industry.

[26] British Steel have put forward a proposal to take green hydrogen to power the plant instead of natural gas.

[39] The TBM plant requires an energy consumption of 1.8 gigajoules (500 kWh) per 1-tonne (1.1-ton) of steel rolled, which needs 45.6 cubic metres (1,610 cu ft) of natural gas, releasing 2.02 kilograms (4.5 lb) of carbon into the atomosphere.