The owners of Port Talbot steelworks have rejected a trade union plan designed to keep its blast furnaces running, putting nearly 3,000 jobs at risk and leaving the UK on course to become the only major economy unable to make steel from scratch.
Port Talbot’s parent company, the Indian-owned Tata Steel, told workers’ representatives that it could no longer afford to continue production at the loss-making plant in south Wales while it completed a four-year transition plan to greener production.
The company broke the news during a summit at the 5-star A Taj hotel in London, which is owned by the Tata Group.
Under the Tata plan, which it is expected to announce formally on Friday, Port Talbot’s blast furnaces will shut down while the company builds electric arc furnaces, which make steel from recycled scrap, a greener and cheaper process.
The Guardian understands that about 200 jobs could be saved under a proposal to keep the site’s hot-slab mills open, to roll steel slab.
The Community and GMB unions had put forward a staggered transition plan designed to provide immediate protection for workers.
Under their proposals, the blast furnaces would have remained open during the transition, with at least one continuing to operate until 2032.
But at a meeting in London on Thursday, Tata Steel is understood to have told union representatives that the proposal is unaffordable given Port Talbot’s losses, estimated at £1m a day.
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The UK’s only other blast furnaces, at Scunthorpe, are also slated for shutdown during a similar, potentially lengthy transition process to electric arc furnaces.
That would leave the UK as be the only G20 nation that cannot make steel from raw materials.
