The BP office is the last area of the plant where documents can still be found. But so many are waterlogged and it seems like the majority are of little interest anyways. But somewhere around my 50th visit (recently) I poked around a bit and I found something interesting.
A speech from the desk of CEO Steve Bennett, distributed internally. It looks to have been written by the PR Team but it is unclear if what specific event it was written for. The cover letter insinuates that the division managers (coke plant, furnace plant, etc) should have copies “for their use”. It is hard to imagine someone at the coke plant reading any portion of this speech to employees, or even a heavily ‘tailored’ version.
But regardless of the intent, this is an interesting snapshot of a very important time in the history of Acme Steel. Some have theorized that the purchase of the new mill as described in this speech led to the downfall of the company. It can’t be too heavily disputed as this cost $372 million (a number given in the speech) and 7 years later the coke plant was closed (furnace plant a year or two after that).
But I am no economist and I don’t run a company. I would mention that it is true you have to spend money to make money. And no matter the condition of the company at the time, something like this is going to be a gamble. In this case, it seems it was a losing gamble. But for history’s sake, I am glad I found this document. But a speech is a living breathing thing and it didn’t feel right to just scan it and offer it here with the thousands of other pages I have archived. A speech should be orated.
So I have read a truncated version of it (you might say I ‘tailored’ it for this website) against the video from the MiniGrated steel video which I edited a bit to suit. Below the video you will find the PDF. Enjoy.