Port Talbot steelworks' owner Tata has confirmed it will cut 2,800 jobs and shut the blast furnaces at the landmark Welsh plant. The Indian-owned steel firm issued a formal statement today confirming the news, which had been widely expected.
The company said its plans would "reverse more than a decade of losses and transition from the legacy blast furnaces to a more sustainable, green steel business". The majority of the 2,500 jobs announced being lost will be at Port Talbot in the next 18 months and 300 further jobs are likely to go in the next three years time once the transition at Port Talbot is completed.
Tata said: "The transformation would secure most of Tata Steel UK's existing product capability and maintain the country's self-sufficiency in steelmaking, while also reducing Tata Steel UK's CO2 emissions by five million tonnes per year and overall UK country emissions by about 1.5%."
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Tata's UK operations are predominantly in Wales with 6,500 of Tata's 8,000 UK staff working in Wales and a further 1,500 at other sites across the rest of the UK. Tata's statement indicates that its plants at Trostre in Llanelli, Llanwern in Newport, Catnic in Caerphilly, Shotton in Deeside, as well as its distribution and development facilities, will not be signficantly affected by the announcement. They will be supplied with half-finished steel from Tata's plants in the Netherlands and India.
- Tata has rejected the union proposal to maintain one blast furnace for another 10 years. Tata said that the plan was "not feasible or affordable"
- Up to 2,800 employees are expected to be potentially affected, with 2,500 roles lost in the next 18 months
- The company is providing £130 million for redundancy payments and support.
- Port Talbot’s two high-emission blast furnaces and coke ovens would close in a phased manner with the first blast furnace closing around mid-2024 and the remaining heavy end assets would wind down during the second half of 2024. The Continuous Annealing Processing Line (CAPL) will close in March 2025
- Tata Steel will continue to operate the hot strip mill.
- Tata Steel's downstream plants in Wales like Trostre, Llanwern and Shotton where steel is turned into finished goods will use half-finished steel produced in the Netherlands and India as well as other select strategic suppliers
The current method of steel production, which involves making new steel in blast furnaces, is set to end and the company announced in September a plan to change to a new type of furnace which uses renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels to power the melting of scrap steel.
The company is planning to spend £1.25bn on the transformation and the UK Government said it would give a £500m subsidy towards the switch. However recycling steel requires far fewer workers and the steel is expected to have a small range of end uses meaning that unions say 3,000 fewer workers across Tata's sites will be needed.
Unions had been urging Tata to stagger the transformation over a decade to protect jobs and also to investigate alternative forms of green steel production apart from electric arc furnaces. They argue that under their plan, the reduction in the workforce could be achieved more painlessly without compulsory redundancies.
Unions worked with industry experts Syndex to come up with an alternative plan which they said would reduce the impact on jobs. Initially backed by GMB, Community and Unite, Unite later withdrew its support. You can read that plan in full here. It would have seen blast furnace number four continue to run until the end of its life-cycle in 2032, while one small electric arc furnace and either a second or open slag bath furnace were built.
We'll bring live updates from today:
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2024-01-19 14:32:00Z
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