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By Emmanuel Egloff
Published on January 18, 2024 at 5:08 p.m., updated yesterday at 7:15 p.m.
The Indian steelmaker is leading the restructuring of blast furnaces at its steelworks in Port Talbot, Wales. GEOFF CADDICK / AFP
“Around 2,500 jobs are expected to be affected” in the next 18 months and another 300 potentially in the next three years.
Indian company Tata Steel will significantly restructure its steel operations in the UK. The Port Talbot site in Wales will be the most affected. “Around 2,500 jobs are likely to be affected” in the next eighteen months and possibly another 300 in the next three years, Tata Steel said on Friday. This represents 35% of the 8,000 people the Indian group employs across the English Channel.
This drastic workforce reduction is part of the company’s strategy to make its steel production less harmful to the environment. To achieve this, Tata has two blast furnaces and coke ovens in Port Talbot “High emissions” of CO2“will be closed gradually, with the first blast furnace closing around mid-2024” and the rest by the end of the year. To this end, an investment of 1.25 billion pounds (1.45 billion euros) is planned for the installation of an electric furnace and modernization of Tata Steel’s infrastructure“Ensuring long-term, high quality production from the UK’s leading steel manufacturer”, describes the group in a press release. The British government plans to support this investment with financial support of £500 million.
The electric furnace runs on scrap metal and not iron ore. This means there will no longer be primary steel production in the UK. In France or Germany, steelmakers such as ArcelorMittal or Thyssenkrupp maintain these primary steel production capacities by using hydrogen instead of coal. But the investments are much larger.
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