The Ministry of Defence has stated that it does not anticipate any adverse impact on the UK’s defence industry or virgin steel supply resulting from potential closures of blast furnaces at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe.
This response came after James Cartlidge, MP for South Suffolk, questioned the Defence Ministry on the possible effects of such closures on the supply of virgin steel, a critical component for defence manufacturing.
Maria Eagle, Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, responded by emphasising the strategic importance of the UK steel industry, noting, “This Government recognises the vital role the UK steel industry plays in Defence, to both our national security and economic growth.”
Eagle went on to reassure that “It is not anticipated that the closure of the blast furnaces at Port Talbot or Scunthorpe will have any adverse impact on Defence, but we will continue to monitor that situation.” She also revealed that the Government is planning to introduce a new Steel Strategy in the spring, aimed at ensuring a sustainable future for UK steel production.
The forthcoming Steel Strategy highlights the Government’s recognition of the importance of domestic steelmaking for defence and other key industries, as well as its commitment to a stable supply chain in light of ongoing economic and industrial changes.
Earlier this year, steelworkers completed the final operation on the last remaining blast furnace at Port Talbot, ending the traditional method of steelmaking in South Wales. Tata Steel extracted the final usable liquid iron from Blast Furnace 4, which is set to be replaced with electric arc furnaces as part of a major restructuring at the UK’s largest steelworks.
This shift was expected to lead to 2,800 job cuts, with Tata acknowledging the difficulty of the decision, while the union Unite criticised it as “industrial vandalism.”
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But how will we build battleship with out it 😀
I thought we used Swedish steel?
Import from india and China
Many a true word….
I had no idea until reading this article that the only virgin steel manufacture left in the UK (at Scunthorpe) was owned by the Chinese and threatened with closure.
You don’t expect that the media made by journalists that came from universities with an Overton window limited to almost only leftist politics would you inform of that.
The number and span of subjects journalists are interested in are minimal.
Don’t worry it owner before the Chinese was an private investment company who paid £1 for it and whose main role was to take loads of fees and push it into receivership
Of course, everything is owned by Chinese, Indians or Russians, they work together, it’s even more frightening when you understand how much of the work on our supposedly secret planes and targeting systems is done in India because it’s cheaper…. Naturally none of our secret code they handle could possibly find it’s way to their best pals in Russia or their best pals in china could it? Out civil service has worked for decades to the point we can’t defend ourselves and are ripe for invasion.
MoD assurances…literally worthless.
Were On the path to Distruction. The fall off Britain.
Afraid so, like the we fires a second nuclear missile test in 10 years and damned near blew the submarine up while the launch was a failure, we can’t afford to fix it and cant afford a retest but dont worry our deterrent works….I suppose they hope putin will die laughing as our two missiles self destruct before leaving the sea
Scunthorpe in theory is not closing but like Port Talbot there will be a hiatus until the arc furnace is built. There elephant in the room is the National Grid which has already said they cannot provide power for the furnaces for years to come. I am assured we haven’t made steel plate in the UK for years so no change no change.
Scunthorpe provides many products. One of which is unfinished steet. In lay terms it’s like a huge dominoes. That then goes to rolling mills and you can make what you want with it. Including plate.
the plate mill at Scunthorpe was closed in 2015 I believe. It could be in a mothballed state
It’s not coming back in my eyes. A lot of the rework of the unfinished Steel is done in the Rotherham Sheffield area. I think their days are numbered.
The Scunthorpe plate mill has been demolished and scrapped, the same happened to the heavy section mill, and the bloom and billet mill, 3mills in total gone never to be replaced.
Would this be the same MoD that destroyed sovereign capabilities and allowed the sale and closure of critical defence facilities? That keeps service families in accommodation deemed ‘unfit for human habitation’? That has failed dismally to produce a defence industrial strategy? That allows its veterans with PTSD to sleep rough while illegal immigrants are housed in four star hotels & given mobile phones and money?
Now let me think, what credibility do they have
👍
Spot on the MOD are tossx pots .
That’ll be they..
Do they think they can just turn a blast furnace on again at a minutes notice? Another government idiot response. “Monitor the situation”.
At times the Enemy not from over seas it’s HMG 🙄
Only because you can buy it cheaper abroad you sold out your own nation for greed two thousand men unemployed is wrong more like six thousand plus stop lying
From memory reading a news article a while back. TATA Steel who owned the two furnaces, have just built a massive Blast Furnace in India . So now they have closed the two uk furnaces and I am purely speculating but competition is now eliminated and uk may will be buying virgin steel from India instead . And as Mentioned China owns the other steel plant . So foreign investment has basically bought and destroyed remaining UK steel infrastructure for their own Chinese Indian national interests . While at the same time lobbying and putting pressure on UK govts who… Read more »
Energy is much cheaper in India and China, don’t thing they have to pay daft carbon tax which ignores pollution of shipping steel from China or India.
Of course it has, after all ships, tanks, shells, guns, bullets don’t need steel do they, nor do lorries, cranes or anything else like corrugated sheets for trenches. But then with such puny forces we wouldn’t survive a russian attack long enough for anyone to make anything. It’s pathetic, truly pathetic.
What she going todo when they gone say to parliment we are buying from China which helps our NetZero, but we can’t build anything because it hasn’t arrived yet
I love the obfuscation inherent in the NetZero calculation.
Anything can be made via any polluting country or process ,then shipped half way round the world…and we of course dont COP for any of the carbon.
Unbelievable it as come to this not one blast furnace in a country that started it all ,and made everything.
You could import enough unfinished steel to build a thousand tanks and a couple of destroyers on a single ship, and you could import it from NW Europe. What might be far more difficult to import in times of war is specialist steel and metal alloy products, complicated forgings, and high-spec valves and seals. We still do most of those things in the UK and this is what really needs to be maintained.