Britain’s biggest steelworks will end production today, when the final blast furnace at Port Talbot in Wales will close after more than 142 years of steelmaking, at a cost of almost 3,000 jobs.
The closure of the last blast furnace at Port Talbot, once the largest steel works in Europe, is the culmination of decades of decline in Britain’s steel industry. Showing the scale of the challenge, India-owned Tata Steel reportedly lost 1 million pounds daily before it began the process of shutting down its facilities.
Tata Steel site will now be subject to a three to four year-long decarbonisation plan to build an electric arc furnace which will make steel from scrap, a 1.25 billion pound project backed by 500 million pounds of British government funding.
Britain’s transition to net zero is changing the country’s industrial landscape. In central England, 200 miles away from Port Talbot, Britain’s last coal-fired power production plant is also due to shut today, ending over 142 years of coal power.
Steelworkers union Community said in a statement that the closure of the final blast furnace was “the end of an era” and called it “an incredibly sad and poignant day.”
Another company, British Steel, which is Chinese-owned, continues to make virgin steel at its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, northern England. The government has said it wants to invest 2.5 billion pounds in the steel industry and it will publish a strategy on its plans to boost the sector next Spring.
