GREEN STEEL: Tata warns new UK import rules leave Port Talbot exposed

Tata Steel has warned that new UK rules meant to curb cheap steel imports do not go far enough to protect British producers, raising fresh concerns over the future of its Port Talbot operations.

The company was responding to the UK Government’s final steel import quota framework, published today, which takes effect from 1 July.

The measures are intended to shield UK steelmakers from a global glut of cheap steel by limiting how much can be imported tariff-free, with higher tariffs on imports above those limits.

But Tata Steel UK chief executive Rajesh Nair said the final quotas still allowed too much overseas steel into strategically important parts of the UK market.

“We do not believe the final quota levels published today reflect UK market conditions or the pressures facing the domestic steel industry,” he said.

He said several categories of steel would still face significant import competition, “exposing domestic production and supply chains to continued pressure.”

Mr Nair said the company was “disappointed by elements of the final framework” and “very concerned about the implications for the long-term competitiveness, sustainability, growth and future investment outlook for the UK steel sector.”

He said that if the government wanted UK producers to supply half of the country’s steel demand, the quota arrangements would need to offer stronger support, and called on ministers to reconsider parts of the framework.

The trade body UK Steel was also critical. Its director of trade and economics, Peter Brennan, said the new quota had in some areas “made the situation worse for UK producers,” singling out galvanised steel, where he said the allocation for Vietnam had been more than tripled.

He said there had been “an opportunity missed in key areas” that would leave parts of the UK supply chain exposed to heavily subsidised imports.

The government has defended the measures. From 1 July, tariff-free steel imports will be cut and tariffs on imports above the new limits will rise, in a framework ministers say is designed to protect UK steelmaking while still allowing manufacturers to source specialist steels not made in Britain.

It has exempted 11 categories of steel where there is no UK alternative, and has said it wants domestic producers to be able to meet up to half of UK demand.

The government has also pointed to the support it has already put into the industry, including £500m towards the new electric arc furnace being built at Port Talbot.

The intervention matters for Wales, where Tata is part-way through a major transformation of the Port Talbot works.

The company closed its blast furnaces in 2024, with the loss of around 2,000 jobs, and is replacing them with a new electric arc furnace expected to produce lower-carbon “green” steel.

Only yesterday, Tata was showing off a year of transformation as the giant new furnace neared completion.

But the transition has not been smooth. Earlier this month, the firm warned the project could be delayed by up to eight months because of a hold-up connecting it to the electricity grid.

Tata said it recognised the work the government had put into the framework during what it called an exceptionally challenging period for global steel, but urged ministers to keep working with the industry and to reconsider parts of the final arrangements.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Port Talbot’s giant new furnace is built and on its way
Tata shows off a year of transformation at the steelworks.

Port Talbot’s £1.25bn furnace could be delayed over power hold-up
The grid connection problem threatening the project’s timetable.

Welsh Government demands UK action over steel trade threat
Earlier warnings that Welsh steel needed protection from cheap imports.

—> Kanker. Miskramen. Astma. Doden in elke familie. Oorzaak: de Italiaanse ‘staalfabriek des doods’ ☠️

En nu heeft RIVM bevestigd: #TataSteel is niet anders.

Kijk en huiver 😨

https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/italie-heeft-een-fabriek-des-doods-a-la-tata-steel-maar-daar-wordt-nu-wel-ingegrepen

Kanker. Miskramen. Astma. Doden in elke familie. Oorzaak: de Italiaanse ‘staalfabriek des doods’ ☠️

En nu heeft RIVM bevestigd: #TataSteel is niet anders.

Kijk en huiver 😨

https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/italie-heeft-een-fabriek-des-doods-a-la-tata-steel-maar-wordt-nu-wel-ingegrepen

GREEN STEEL: Port Talbot’s giant new furnace is built and on its way — as Tata shows off a year of transformation

The centrepiece of Tata Steel’s £1.25bn transformation of Port Talbot — its giant new electric arc furnace — has been built and is now making its way to south Wales.

In a project update, the company said the main components of the furnace had been fabricated and were beginning their journey to Port Talbot from sites around the world.

The furnace has been designed and made by the Italian metals technology firm Tenova, and is billed as one of the largest of its kind ever built, with a main shell measuring more than nine metres across.

Once running, it will be capable of producing 3.2 million tonnes of steel a year, melting scrap using electricity rather than the coal-fired blast furnaces that defined the site for generations.

The update came in the latest instalment of Tata’s own video series charting the rebuild, in which a presenter and project director tour the site a year on from when much of it was still open ground.

Tata’s project director said the big parts were ready to ship, with roughly a two-month sailing ahead of them before they arrive to be offloaded.

The components are being delivered in 11 separate lots, spread out over the coming year, the company said.

According to Tata, the wider project is “on plan” and broadly on time, with the director describing the progress over the past year as a “morale booster” for the workforce.

Around 1,200 people are expected to be working on the site at peak, across civil, mechanical, electrical and piping work.

The video showed the scale of the groundworks — including a former cooling lagoon partly filled with some 220,000 tonnes of stone, and a separate area cleared of around 400,000 tonnes of material.

The footage also showed work on the site’s future scrap yard, which will handle around 70,000 tonnes of scrap a week to feed the new furnace

Nearby, contractors for National Grid are piling the ground for a 275,000-volt substation that will power the furnace, on land the grid operator now leases from Tata.

The furnace site itself was where the UK’s Business and Trade Secretary, Peter Kyle, launched the government’s Steel Strategy in March, and where a groundbreaking ceremony was held in July last year.

Tata’s confident tone follows a turbulent few weeks for the project, however.

Earlier this month, Swansea Bay News reported that the furnace could be delayed by up to eight months over a hold-up in its power connection, prompting cross-party calls for answers and a row over who knew what, and when.

An earlier shipment of furnace parts had also been pushed back by several weeks, with reports linking the delay to rising shipping costs amid tensions in the Middle East.

The switch to electric arc steelmaking, backed by £500m of UK Government funding, is central to Tata’s plan to cut emissions at Port Talbot — but it came at the cost of thousands of jobs when the blast furnaces closed.

A full video tour of the site is available on Tata Steel’s YouTube channel.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Port Talbot’s £1.25bn furnace could be delayed by up to eight months over power hold-up
The grid connection problem that put the project’s timetable in doubt.

Cross-party calls for answers over Port Talbot furnace setback
Politicians press Tata and National Grid over the delay.

Tata ‘confident’ furnace project unaffected after Port Talbot fire
The company’s response after a fire at the steelworks this month.

ENERGY: South Wales could be a clean power giant — so why are bills still high, and what’s holding it back?

South Wales has been told, again and again, that it could be one of the powerhouses of Britain’s clean-energy future.

Off its coast lies some of the best wind and tidal potential in Europe. Above Port Talbot, plans have been drawn for solar farms big enough to power tens of thousands of homes. And in Swansea Bay, the long-held dream of a tidal lagoon has been edging back to life.

Yet many families across the region are still choosing between heating and eating, in homes that leak warmth and on bills that have stayed stubbornly high.

That gap — between the promise and the reality — was at the heart of a gathering of energy chiefs in Swansea this week.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO), the publicly owned body now responsible for planning Britain’s electricity network, held a forum at the Swansea.com Stadium, one of just two it is holding in Wales.

The job NESO has been handed is enormous: to plan the biggest upgrade of the energy grid in generations, deciding what gets built, where, and when.

And for South Wales, the stakes could hardly be higher — because the region’s clean-energy ambitions keep running into the same wall.

The power is there to be harvested. The problem is getting it to where it is needed.

NESO’s Head of Wales, Aled Rowlands, told the forum that while Wales had “a rich energy and industrial heritage”, it faced real obstacles — “uneven connectivity, grid constraints and fuel poverty”.

In plain terms, the grid — the network of cables, substations and pylons that moves electricity around — was largely built for a different age, and cannot yet carry all the new power the region could produce, or deliver all the power that industry now needs.

There is no clearer example than just down the road in Port Talbot.

Tata Steel is building a £1.25bn electric arc furnace to make greener steel — but the furnace needs a vast new electricity connection to run, and that connection has been caught up in delays that could push the project back to 2028.

The setback has triggered cross-party alarm at the Senedd, with politicians pressing Tata and National Grid for answers, and warning of fresh uncertainty for the town’s steelworkers.

If even a flagship national project like green steel can be left waiting for the grid to catch up, it shows the scale of the problem the region faces.

That bottleneck has real consequences. When the network is full or upgrades run late, new projects — and the jobs and investment that come with them — can be delayed for years, or sent elsewhere.

It is why developers say what happens next matters so much. Ben Burggraaf, chief executive of Net Zero Industry Wales, told the Swansea forum that Wales had the chance to become “a leading clean energy transition hub” — but only if the investment in grid infrastructure actually followed.

The clean-energy promise is real, and already taking shape. Plans for a £64m floating wind hub at Port Talbot could create up to 5,000 jobs, while the area’s ports sit at the centre of a multi-billion-pound offshore wind push.

It is the kind of future many hope can replace what was lost when Port Talbot’s blast furnaces closed.

But building the grid to carry all that power comes at a cost that is increasingly visible in the landscape — and increasingly contested.

Across Carmarthenshire, communities have fought back against a wave of pylon and energy-park plans, warning of the “industrialisation” of the countryside and accusing developers of “greed energy, not green energy”.

Those tensions — clean power on one side, the pylons and cables needed to move it on the other — are exactly the choices NESO’s planning is meant to navigate.

For ordinary households, the question is simpler: when does any of this start bringing bills down?

Wales has long had some of the leakiest housing stock in Britain, with most Welsh homes losing money through poor insulation — a problem that pushes up bills regardless of how much clean power is generated nearby.

NESO says a more joined-up plan should, in time, strengthen the network, support cleaner power and deliver “the best possible value for bill payers”.

Whether that promise is felt in people’s pockets — and whether the jobs and investment land in South Wales rather than somewhere else — is the test that matters.

For now, the region sits on an awkward paradox: rich in the energy of the future, but not yet able to plug it all in.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Green steel delay over furnace grid connection
Why Port Talbot’s electric arc furnace is left waiting for power.

£64m Port Talbot wind hub ‘could create 5,000 jobs’
The floating wind plan that could transform the town.

Swansea lagoon dream ‘back on track’
Fresh hope for the long-awaited tidal lagoon.

Lees en huiver. Zo wordt het met PRO natuurlijk nooit wat. Wat een blamage.

"Tata. Lobby. Lees zelf maar even.
Doen we net alsof de zoveelste boete niet net gecommuniceerd is. En, sorry; ik gun PRO een toekomst zonder de bobo’s uit het verleden, die altijd weer te porren blijken voor een entre nous met dit soort… nou ja. Laat ook maar."

(Myrthe Hilkens‬ @myrthehilkens.bsky.social‬ op BS) #PRO #tatasteel #greenwashing
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/reiniergrimbergen_europa-groenesupermacht-publicaffairs-share-7473332548081758208-sr2q/
https://tbsky.app/profile/myrthehilkens.bsky.social/post/3mongxeke7s22

Het is voor NOS niet eenvoudig om berichtgeving zuiver te houden maar dat #stikstofslot is een lobbyframe.

Kijk om je heen. Er wordt overal gebouwd. Vooral #tatasteel, #Schiphol en #veehouderij zitten vast want ze opereren illegaal en hebben een negatieve businesscase. En nog wat mestfabrieken en andere vervuilers.

Ze vertegenwoordigen niet 'Nederland'. Dat ze klem zitten is zelfs gezond, zo ontstaat er ruimte voor bedrijven die wél schoon kunnen produceren.

https://nos.nl/l/2618868