At least 3,000 jobs at risk as Tata Steel to shut down two blast furnaces at Port Talbot: Report

The owners of Port Talbot Steelworks have rejected a trade union plan aimed at maintaining the operation of its blast furnaces, putting nearly 3,000 jobs at risk and potentially leaving the UK as the sole major economy incapable of producing steel from raw materials. Tata Steel, the Indian-owned parent company of Port Talbot, informed workers’ representatives that it couldn’t sustain production at the loss-making plant in south Wales while implementing a four-year transition plan toward greener production, despite receiving £500 million from the government for the initiative. Asked for comment, Tata said it had “been engaging regularly and constructively with… trades union colleagues and their advisors for some time about the best way forward to create a sustainable green steel future for Tata Steel in the UK. “When we have any formal announcement to make about our proposals for the future, we will always share these with our employees first,” it said in a statement. Towards the end of last year, the UK government provided £500 million ($634 million) to fund the production of “greener” steel at the country’s biggest steelworks, while saying that 3,000 jobs were still at risk. The money for an electric furnace safeguarded 5,000 of the more than 8,000 jobs. Port Talbot steelworks is the UK’s single biggest carbon emitter, and the government has been looking to help Tata Steel and British Steel, run by Chinese group Jingye, to replace dirty blast furnaces. The Mumbai-based conglomerate had threatened to shut the plant unless it received state aid to help decarbonise production and cut emissions. The government said replacing the coal-powered blast furnaces at the Port Talbot site would reduce the UK’s carbon emissions by about 1.5 per cent. Experts have said green hydrogen could help the massively polluting steel industry, but producing the clean energy in large enough quantities requires significant investment. As well as climate fallout, the steel sector has seen costs soar amid surging energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With inputs from agencies.