The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that specialised steel used in the construction of the Royal Navy’s new Dreadnought-class submarines is being imported from France due to the absence of domestic production capability, according to a written parliamentary response published on 30 April 2025.
Responding to a question from Ben Obese-Jecty MP (Conservative – Huntingdon), Minister of State for Defence Maria Eagle stated: “There are no UK suppliers of the specialised steel required in the manufacture of submarine pressure hulls.”
She explained that UK submarine steel requirements continue to be met by a mix of domestic and international suppliers through prime contractors, based on availability and performance. “This reflects the need to source specific grades of steel, not all of which are available in the UK, and ensures competitive procurement in terms of cost, time and quality,” she said.
While submarine pressure hull steel must currently be imported, Eagle confirmed that “other grades of steel used in the manufacture of submarines are sourced from a range of suppliers, including a number of UK companies.”
The Minister emphasised that the government supports UK industry participation wherever possible. “We encourage the sourcing of UK steel wherever it is technically and commercially feasible and publish our future pipeline of steel requirements, enabling steel manufacturers better to plan and bid for government opportunities.”
She added: “This Government is committed to ensuring that defence spending supports British-based businesses and economic growth which will be a key tenet in the upcoming Defence Industrial Strategy.”
The Dreadnought-class submarine programme is one of the UK’s largest and most strategically significant defence projects, intended to replace the current Vanguard-class fleet and sustain the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent into the 2060s.
It’s all rather pathetic. We used to produce the best steel in the world.
Bluff and bluster by the Labour minister. Trying to hide the damage net zero is doing to our industrial and now defence capability.
Evidence please, that is such a lazy cop out accusation. British industry has been in decline since the 1900s first very gradually but significantly post war and decimated in the 60s and 70s. Geez even the US which exploited our weakness and technology and lack of competitors post war has declined ever since the mid 50s. It has been a failing of our own creation, lack of investment, poor efficiency and rank bad management and the change in resource World production costs as time passed.
Our energy costs are terrible but why? The reasons are widespread and with a long complacent history, certainly not a recent ‘green’ issue. However the lack of investment in renewables back in the 90s was a big mistake, thus the extra compressed cost now, India in the last 18mths brought more renewable production online than our whole renewable history. The lack of investment in nuclear in that period too was a factor, as our existing stations started to fail and reach end of life, but in reality nuclear isn’t cheap just sensible as part of a coordinated plan to avoid fluctuating oil/gas prices. Our energy costs are totally dictated by the price of gas which we buy on the open market and unlike certain other Countries we no longer retain strategic storage so the vagaries of World events like war destroys our efficiency. We decided over the last 15+ years to commit to gas to produce electricity that was naive especially as we don’t any longer have enough North Sea gas to fulfil it and again we don’t benefit directly from it anyway we buy it on the open market so World prices still apply even to the gas we produce. We need to become more self sustaining all new warehouses should have solar roofs, new housing solar and heat pumps, offices solar glass there’s a British Company that can apply an electricity generating film to any surface. Now we have to commit to modular reactors as soon as viable and push towards fusion of course which finally is starting to look more attainable.
Looking back we should have committed more to wave power and to the Severn and Wash schemes but as usual we have been far too complacent for far too long. However one thing is certain had we spent even longer committed to old fossil fuel sources of energy it was never going to give us cheap energy and we lost most of our heavy energy when we actually did exploit it. Meanwhile privatisation gave us none of the cost efficiencies promised and simply prevented a true National plan being implemented while the Govt still seems to have to invest to get those private companies to commit to change. Worst of all both Worlds in my view.
“We decided over the last 15+ years to commit to gas to produce electricity”
Nah, that was decided upon back in the 90s by John Major and the ‘dash for gas’. In the 70s Tony Benn had ensured coal and nuclear would provide Britain’s leccy and North Sea gas would be reserved for heating. In hindsight transitioning to renewables in the 90s would have been a smarter move. But hey, at least we had cheap energy for a few decades.
Solar is not a panacea for the UK. Our Northern hemisphere location means that in the middle of winter hours of daylight decline to below 7 hours for some parts of the UK.
Renewables without a massive energy storage infrastructure is pointless. It is currently not technically possible to build enough energy storage to power the UK over the winter. This requirement will get larger and even more impossible as the population of the UK grows and as we transition from ICE cars to electric.
If you don’t want to use coal or gas the only answer is nuclear. Take the windmill and solar money and divert it to a total and not partial energy solution. An immediate and large scale move to small modular nuclear reactors would allow us to quickly introduce power generation and also enable us to benefit from lower production costs due to economies of scale. It would also put money into good British manufacturing companies like Rolls Royce instead of companies in China. Rolls Royce in turn would be able to benefit from larger production orders and scale up cost savings and in turn make their product more competitive abroad.
Well said.
A commitment to maintain our nuclear power capabilities would have been intelligent as well. Our current reliance on french nuclear expertise is quite painful.
The way the oil windfall was wasted on cutting taxes was a historic mistake.
HY-80 hasn’t been manufactured in the UK for at least 40 years. Steel is generic term for multiple different alloys with very different elements used
You do know construction of the Dreadnought class commenced in late 2016. Labour came into power in July 2024.
So this steel was almost definitely ordered under the Conservative government
Much of the Astute class was built using French steel. It’s not a new thing at all.
Wow how low this country has sank ..
No no my friend, without specialist steels our country will not be able to sink that far at all!
“The absence of domestic production capability” says it all.
Really bringing the facts with that comment. We all read the article.
The Vanguards were the same. HY-80 was from the States that time
I thought the steel came from British Steel for the Vanguards when we still had the capability to produce specialised steels…
Nope. HY-80 has been mostly imported from the US or France
In the late 80’s early 90’s we were told that the steel we were producing at Ravenscraig was for the trident subs….
No surprise 🙄
Total rubbish.
at least, if we ever run out of . specialised steel ??
we will have a head start on building wooden ships.
get the victory ready. .lol?? just an honest thought..
We actually were ran out of most ship grade wood in the 18th century, and became dependent on sources from the Baltic and Americas
This cannot surprise anyone. It will take a generation to even try to get back our industrial base so lets hope Vlad gives us the time or Donald J or any other fascist lurking out there
To all the moaners – I’m sure we could supply every single part from Britain if we want but can you imagine the cost!? I’m sure there are elements that other countries rely on Britain for – Martin-Baker Ejection seats jumps to mind.
It does really seem that we have lost so much capacity, that we are becoming a nation of has been.
Very very sad, from an empire to a second class nation.
If we don’t wake up and change our policies we will slide into a 3rd class category.
Please, please wake up!!
By ‘wake up’ do you mean taking an entire steel mill offline for an indeterminate amount of time to make a few 10k’s of specialist steel (a few days of production worth) when the french are already up to their eyeballs in the stuff and are willing to sell it for cheap?
It takes some time to dial in to a new steel mix I believe and all that time you are bleeding money.
Why is this news? The V & C, R, S and T classes all has their reactor containment steel manufactured in France. UK industry has been wrecked for years and would required major investment and political will to rebuilt it, something our politician do not understand or will resolve no matter the party in power.
Steel is politically big atm, so a lot of political questions being asked of ministers.
Was under the impression that Forgemasters in Sheffield could produce HY80? Or is that just castings/ forgings from imported materials?
Is it me, or are there several new names in this articles comment section who don’t usually post, but are getting their digs in at the UK?
Genuine, or political warfare again?
Are you ok mate, do you think you might just be taking this too seriously ?
More like someone rightwing posted this to their feed
Using foreign steel is ok if they haven’t been invaded or taken over by a hostile power. It’s like relying on American planes, engines, electronics, it’s shit when the yanks elect a russian like trump as president. Even Saab is finding out that not being able to make engines yourself means you can’t sell your planes
Problem is the HY series need incredible expertise and need to be poured in quantitiy to get values for money.
I’m no expert on steel making but I believe you essentially have to take an entire mill offline while you took to pour it, and may lose the first few batches due to inexperience. Then once you’ve dialed it in you end up with so much of the stuff (2k tons per day) you basically have to export it to break even for a short run of it.
We therefore likely got that French steel for a absolute bargain price
The UK was the only state that followed EU rules and didn’t subsidies it’s industries.
Which is why they are all in the EU now.