UK Steel Industry Confronts a Cold, Hard Truth
Britain needs to acknowledge its days as a manufacturing powerhouse are over while supporting communities that face massive job losses.
A dirty business.
Photograph: Construction Photography/Avalon via Getty Images
Britain has entered a bout of hand-wringing over the future of its steel industry. Everyone, it seems, has found something to hate in Tata Steel Ltd.’s plan to close its two blast furnaces at Port Talbot in South Wales and replace them with less-polluting technology. For conservative commentators, the announcement is evidence of the damage wrought to business by the UK’s net-zero targets. Trade unions and opposition politicians, meanwhile, lament the loss of up to 2,800 jobs and the Indian company’s refusal to countenance a more gentle transition.
The end of traditional steelmaking is neither an act of corporate villainy nor an example of out-of-control environmental wokery. It reflects competitive pressures and the march of technological progress — brutal in its local effects, to be sure, but ultimately unavoidable. Port Talbot is a community built on steelmaking, and the shedding of almost three-quarters of the factory’s remaining workers will devastate the town of 32,000. It isn’t alone. British Steel Ltd., owned by China’s Jingye Group, said in November it would close its remaining blast furnaces at Scunthorpe in eastern England and replace them with electric arc furnaces.