The owners of the Port Talbot steelworks are expected to confirm the shutdown of its blast furnaces on Friday morning, putting almost 3,000 jobs at risk.
Trade union representatives have gathered outside the gates of the works in south Wales to protest against the decision, which members have said will be a “crushing blow” to workers and UK steelmaking.
The owners of Port Talbot steelworks have rejected a trade union plan designed to keep its blast furnaces running on Thursday.
An announcement confirming the decision is expected before midday on Friday, after trading on the stock exchange ends in Mumbai. Shares in Port Talbot’s owner, Indian-owned Tata, rose 2% in trading, ending a two-day decline.
Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, said there was “still time” for Tata Steel to “pull back from the brink” of what he said would be an “utterly devastating” decision to close blast furnaces at its biggest UK plant.
“Do we really want to be a country, given the dangerous and turbulent world in which we live, that isn’t able to produce its own steel?,” he said, speaking on Sky News on Friday morning.
“We are very proud of what the Port Talbot steelworks means for Wales and for the entire United Kingdom and we feel passionately here. There isn’t a single household in my Aberavon constituency that isn’t connected to the steelworks in some way, and the impact would be utterly devastating.
“So we are urging Tata Steel and the UK government to get back round the table with the unions. There is still time to pull back from the brink and we will be continuing to fight for that with every single fibre of our being.”
Tata Steel told workers’ representatives that it could no longer afford to continue production at the loss-making plant in south Wales while it completed a four-year transition plan to greener production.
The company, which is getting £500m from the government to help with that plan, broke the news during a summit at the five-star St James’ Court hotel in London, which is owned by the Tata Group.
Under the Tata plan, Port Talbot’s blast furnaces will shut down while the company builds electric arc furnaces, which make steel from recycled scrap, a greener and cheaper process.
The Guardian understands that about 200 jobs could be saved under a proposal to keep some of the site’s mills open, to roll steel slab. But the decision is a huge blow for a town where the local economy is so heavily dependent on a single factory.
The Community and GMB unions had put forward a staggered transition plan designed to provide immediate protection for workers.
Under their proposals, the blast furnaces would have remained open during the transition, with at least one continuing to operate until 2032.
But at the meeting in London on Thursday, Tata Steel is understood to have told union representatives that the proposal was unaffordable given Port Talbot’s losses, estimated at £1m a day.
The UK’s only other blast furnaces, at Scunthorpe, are also slated for shutdown during a similar, potentially lengthy transition process to electric arc furnaces.
That would leave the UK as be the only G20 country that cannot make steel from raw materials.
