Ore Transport
The ore transportation up to the estuary was resolved with mining railways, which served both the steel mills already in place as well as the foreign companies that transported it by sea. The transport of ore by ship, in turn, demanded dikes for repairs, naval supplies, boiler making, machinery, shipyards, sails, rigging and cordage, etc.
Technical improvements in navigation, steam and propeller provided greater safety and navigability to vessels, which led to the development of regular lines and the deployment of shipping companies. These demanded more metres of dock to moor, more surface to unload, and better tools to make stays cheaper. All the deployment for ore extraction also required machinery, mechanical workshops, the metallurgical industry, screws, tools, wood, etc.
The massive export of iron ore does not prove any kind of industrial development, but, together with the steel mills established in the Nervion basin, it exerted a strong and intense drag effect on the rest of the economy. This generated a multiplier effect that modified the region’s economic structure, promoting the development of those industrial sectors, which, in the first decade of the twentieth century, played a leading role in the consolidation of the industrial development in Biscay.
