Mike Hedges MS challenges the recently announced proposed closure.

As a former steelworker at the iron and steel making end of Port Talbot, I find the proposed closure of iron and steel making in Port Talbot very worrying. The Welsh contribution to the UK steel industry is decisive – it’s part of our nation’s story and serves as a marker of Welsh excellence.

Tata Steel has confirmed it will cut 2,800 jobs across its UK operations as part of plans to transition to a greener way of making steel. The announcement by Tata Steel UK leaves thousands of workers and their families, in Tata Steel and across the wider supply chain, facing an uncertain future. It is not only those who are directly employed: we have contractors on site, suppliers and local shops and commercial activities who rely on steelworkers for some of their income.

Salary levels of both directly employed steelworkers and contractors are substantially higher than the local average wage. This will have a devastating knock-on effect on the economy of the area, not just in Port Talbot, but the surrounding areas where many of those working there live.

The UK will be the only G7 country not able to make virgin steel. We cannot currently make all grades of steel through electric arc steelmaking. The UK will be reliant on imports from competitor economies.

I am firmly of the view that the UK Government and Tata have the tools between them to secure a longer, fairer transition for a sector that is good for green growth and essential to our collective security and economy.

I want to see the best deal for steel, not the cheapest deal for steel. There are credible changes that the UK Government could explore with a sense of urgency so that more green steel is made in Wales. UK Labour proposals for a £3bn Green Steel fund would make a different future possible.

I believe we need the production of steel, from iron into the finished product. An electric arc furnace depends on cheap and available scrap, plus cheap electricity, both of which we know are not certain.

The trade unions have put forward a proposal that will see Tata transition to a decarbonised steel making industry that also looks to keep more steelworkers employed at Port Talbot and will open the door for the continuation of virgin steel making, allowing the quality of steel produced to feed other sites and markets across the UK. We must press Tata to accept this pathway for the future of steel making in Wales and call on the UK Government to ensure that steel making in Wales has the greatest combination of steel making processes, not just electric arc.

Electric arc steel making is part of the future. There are different grades of steel that could be made by electric arc in the future but virgin steel, as it’s often called in the sector, is also part of what we are going to need.

If we want to have steel plate produced in larger quantities to help take advantage of, not just the opportunity to decarbonise power, but the economic development and jobs opportunities that exist off our shoreline, then we’re going to need more plate steel. I would much rather that that is produced within in the UK, within Wales, and that would then mean that we’re not as vulnerable to other parts of the world for the imports we would otherwise need.

This is the end of iron and steel making closures in Wale. Over the last fifty years, Ebbw Vale, East Moors, Shotton and Llanwern have all seen the end of iron and steel making. We have also seen the closure of ingot mould manufacturing in Dowlais and Landore in Swansea, tinplate plants closing in Ebbw Vale and Velindre plus specialist steel and coating closures at Bryngwyn, Tafarnaubach and the closure of plants such as the Orb work, Cwmfelin Press and the Whitehead works. Alongside these closures we have seen the closures of the Duport steelworks in Llanelli and Briton Ferry.

There have been fundamental changes for the British steel industry, the most important being the completion of a process already underway at the start of the twentieth century: the replacement of home-produced iron ore with foreign ore.

By 1988 virtually all ore and most coal used was foreign in origin. This change altered the economics of steel making in Britain in favour of coastal steel production with access to an ore dock/harbour.

This eliminated costly rail transport to inland steelworks. It is that change and particularly direct access to an ore dock/harbour that accounted for the survival of steel making at Port Talbot.

This led to a change, with a concentration of steel making at fewer but larger sites: the planned five major steelworks at Ravenscraig, Port Talbot, the Anchor works in Scunthorpe, Llanwern and Redcar.

This is not the first major job losses in Port Talbot. Following the steel strike, a plan known as slimline was introduced which massively reduced direct employment at the site but with some of the work being taken on by contractors following the Japanese model.

If we lose the capacity to make iron and steel at Port Talbot, we will never get it back.

Mike Hedges is the Senedd Member for Swansea East.

Image: Tata Steel works at Port Talbot. https://www.flickr.com/photos/8592508@N04/34521098590. Creator: Phil Beard Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic