Lucky to have spotted this on travels among the Rother Valley... which with nearby Sheffield forged a history of steel-making that exported goods throughout the globe and pioneered any number of the methods and means involved. Steel is heavy in its molten state as its solid, and not far hence from here men would haul 150lb ceramic crucibles from a furnace beneath the floor all day and so lose two stone in weight in the process... which was put back on in the form of beer the same evening.
This though a mechanised form of doing much the same, and if you're wondering how it is that steel vessels can retain molten steel the clue is in the ceramic lining once more. The family form of Roper in Yorkshire produced the specialised foundry equipment required for all of this for over a century between 1921 and 2023, when afterward it was acquired by another UK firm in the same town that began its life in the 1960s... a relatively happy ending after all, if not an unalloyed joy?
