page_title: Doncaster
section_title: Tractor production
hierarchical_section_title: Doncaster / Economy / Tractor production
caption_attribution_description: English: Ploughing At Portlemore Barton, Malborough.
context_page_description: Doncaster is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. Together with its surrounding suburbs and settlements, the town forms part of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, which had a mid-2019 est. population of 311,890. The town itself has a population of 109,805. The Doncaster Urban Area had a population of 158,141 in 2011 and includes Doncaster and neighbouring small villages. Part of the West Riding of Yorkshire until 1974, Doncaster is about 17 miles north-east of Sheffield, with which it is served by an international airport, Doncaster Sheffield Airport in Finningley. Under the Local Government Act 1972, Doncaster was incorporated into a newly created metropolitan borough in 1974, itself incorporated with other nearby boroughs in the 1974 creation of the metropolitan county of South Yorkshire.
context_section_description: In 1930, International Harvester (IH) started the production of agricultural implements at a factory on Wheatley Hall Road and later at another in the Carr Hill area of Doncaster. The first tractor built at the factory was a Farmall M, which came off the production line on 13 September 1949. Tractors were initially built from parts shipped from the US. The Wheatley Hall Road factory was extended after the war with a new foundry to make the heavy castings. The factory started Crawler tractor production in 1953. By 1960 the factory was making a range of tractors from scratch, designed specifically for British and European markets, and sold under the 'McCormick International' name. Assembly moved in 1965 to the Carr Hill plant. In 1983 tractor production was moved to IH's other Doncaster factory at Wheatley Hall. In 1985, International Harvester sold its agricultural division to Tenneco, Inc. which then merged the operation with its subsidiary J.I. Case to form Case IH, who continued to design and build its European tractor range in Doncaster, shutting the David Brown Ltd. tractor factory near Huddersfield. The 350,000th tractor came off the production line in 1999.
  In 2000, the factory was purchased by ARGO SpA, an Italian-based agricultural equipment builder. Doncaster was the sole production site of the McCormick Tractors brand, and the factory employed around 380 people (although approximately 1,100 people are employed in the worldwide McCormick group). In December 2006 the parent company, ARGO Spa, announced that the Doncaster facility was to close in 2007 with the loss of around 325 jobs. The announcement was made only one week before Christmas. 61 years of tractor production in Doncaster came to an end in 2007 when McCormick tractor production was moved to Italy.
caption: Ploughing by tractor
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