My thoughts in Conservative Home on the closure of the blast furnaces at Tata Steel Port Talbot:
Click to read the full article by Sanjoy on ConHome
Extract:
Tata Steel has just confirmed the news that Port Talbot has long been dreading. Following the rejection of the Unite union’s phased transition to clean steelmaking, the town’s two blast furnaces will close this year. Faced with losses of a million pounds a day, Tata will replace these with an electric arc furnace (EAF) fed by scrap metal – sadly, at the expense of 3,000 jobs at the vast Margam works.
This technology switch has consequences beyond South Wales. EAFs produce steel at lower cost (and with lower emissions) than traditional blast furnaces reliant on raw materials (like iron ore and coal). But as EAF’s share of world steel capacity approaches 50 per cent, global scrap supply looks set to tighten, driving costs up. Ditching blast furnaces would leave us rare amongst developed nations in being unable to produce higher quality, virgin steels. No wonder everyone from trade Unions to the Conservatives’ own Northern Research Group is concerned.
So, what is the current state of the steel industry, here in the UK and abroad? And what options do we have, both politically and technologically?