Decision to be made on Port Talbot’s new electric arc furnace next week
Lewis Smith, local democracy reporter
A decision over plans to install a new electric arc furnace at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot site is expected to be made next week.
The plans which have been handed in by the Indian based steel giants will soon go before a Neath Port Talbot Council planning committee, where members will decide whether or not to approve proposals to develop a new electric arc furnace.
If approved, the plans would see Tata Steel’s £1.25bn green steel-making project, which is described as being of “national strategic importance”, commence in quarter three of 2025 with an estimated completion time of three years.
Demolition
It will see the demolition of a number of existing buildings and structures within the current steelworks boundary, along with the construction of the new electric arc furnace, built by the Italian firm Tenova, which is expected to be one of the biggest of its kind in the world.
The announcement comes just months after the closure of the site’s two massive blast furnaces in September 2024 with around 2,000 redundancies expected for local workers as a result.
It also comes just weeks after the announcement that UK construction and civil engineering company Sir Robert McAlpine will be responsible for managing the main civil, structural and building works for the development if it is approved.
Scrap steel
While operations with the electric arc will mean no “virgin steel” created from scratch can be made at the site moving forward, and not as many members of staff will be required to run it, plans say the new furnace will still have a capacity to produce millions of tonnes of steel each year through melting scrap steel.
The plans, which have been recommended for approval by council officers, will now go before the committee for a decision on February 18, 2025.
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Thousands of job losses. Reduced production of steel. Complete loss of primary steel capacity. £500 million of taxpayers’ money (so far). The new plant will require more than 200MW which means, if they want to call this ‘green’ steel, it will need about 50 additional wind-turbines to feed it.
But look on the bright side, the reduction in NOx emissions means the 50mph speed restriction can be lifted on the M4 (or am I naive?).
I think it’s fairly obvious the leccy isn’t coming from wind turbines
There was no other option for keeping the site open than this
200MW will need about 600MW of off shore or 800MW of on shore wind turbines. Off shore at 12MW will be 50 but on shore at 4MW will require 200. Cost though mat be pretty similar. What matters is that they are spread out across the country so that we get the advantage of geographic diversity.
Self important useless people
The danger to national security is now in the balance by taking away the port talbot plants ability to produce various steel from virgin steel. This is undoubtedly a gamble that in the present world is a dangerous one. These politicians have also missed the fact that tata are building a new steel plant on the coast which will have a number of blast furnaces to allow for the doubling of virgin steel production? You can forget local politicians as they are insignificant as are the workforce at the plant. Don’t forget the new plant is reliant on scrap metal… Read more »
Sanjeev Gupta (owner of liberty) use to go around conferences saying that if we only recycled steel that has already been made, we would never have to make any fresh steel. Obviously that’s not quite true especially around specialty steels, but in terms of volumes, access to scrap metal or low grade inputs shouldn’t be an issue.
to me, national security issues are a artefact in this discussion. We haven’t been able to make all grades of steel for many many years. It’s a very specialized industry with companies, focusing on certain product lines