What will happen next at Tata's Port Talbot steelworks

A mock-up design of a new electric arc furnace at a steelworks, aerial shot
-Credit: (Image: Tata Steel)


The Port Talbot landscape has long been synonymous with the blast furnaces. The industrial structures, stained with red, the steam coming from them visible to all who live near, and those passing on the M4. And despite their working lives now being over, there are no immediate plans for them to be removed.

The process of winding down operations at the final blast furnace has been underway for a number of days. Tata had warned residents they should expect 'whooshing' sounds and plumes of steam. Tata confirmed the last blast furnace at the site would be switched off, along with the remaining heavy-end operations on Monday, September 30.

The Indian-owned steelworks is switching to a greener electric arc furnace, with Tata saying the £1.25bn scheme is the only way to keep any steelmaking in Port Talbot. However, it brings with it thousands of redundancies to UK steelworkers, around 2,000 of which are at Port Talbot. There will be further knock-on impacts to contractors and external businesses which have links to the Tata business.

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Emotions were running high at the site with many workers talking about the uncertainty they face as the company is yet to confirm who will receive job offers and who is being made redundant.

The first details of how the site will change have been published ahead of a planning application being submitted. The mandatory consultation has to take place before a planning application is submitted.

It says how some existing buildings will have to be demolished including the scrap storage shed, weighbridge, electrical room, cooling tower and pump house.

However, the planning statement says while Tata Steel will decommission the heavy-end infrastructure, "there is no commitment to wholesale demolition of the heavy-end structures'.

The document says it will meet its safety, environmental and contractual obligations to third-party landholders, and all legal commitments. However, any further regeneration of land on the steelworks will be subject to separate planning applications.

There are already discussions about what will happen to land on the existing site no longer needed by Tata Steel via the transition board.

To deliver the new arc furnace, there will need to be an upgrade to National Grid's electrical substation at Margam and a new electrical substation built at the steelworks and cables will have to be installed to connect the two.

There is then a seven-stage development about getting the site ready for the EAF.

The main raw material will be scrap metal, HBI and pig iron, which will be transported to the site via the existing rail networks but the line will be upgraded. It will also be dualled, so two trains can travel to the facility at any time. Some deliveries will also be made via road. Approximately 70,000 tonnes of scrap steel will arrive every week to a new scrap yard facility including storage and processing equipment.

The last hours of blast furnace four at Tata's Port Talbot steelworks -Credit:Jonathan James
The last hours of blast furnace four at Tata's Port Talbot steelworks -Credit:Jonathan James

Raw materials will go through the site via large vehicles so internal roads will be widened and resurfaced and some new roads will be created for "super heavy vehicles" to use.

The EAF will be operated from a control room, and molten metal will be tapped from the vessel at the rate of 320 tonnes every 42 minutes, with an annual production capacity of 3.2mt per year.

The molten metal is then transferred into one of two ladle furnaces and the chemistry of the steel can be tweaked to the desired grade. For the latest politics news in Wales sign up to our newsletter here.

Once fully refined, it will be transported to the continuous casting plant, where the molten metal is poured from a hopper high in the roof of the building into one of two upgraded continuous casters. The surface of the metal rapidly solidifies and forms a thick continuous block which can then be cut. These are the "steel slab" which can go onto the rolling mills already on the site once cooled.

They will then be taken to the existing stockyards and turned into coils before being processed.

The low-carbon steel can then be transported, mainly by rail, to Tata sites across the UK.

The site will have two major sources of waste, dust and slag. The slag can be tapped separately from the steel and taken to the processing area to be cooled and can be processed to be used as aggregate, often used as road stone. The dusts will be filtered and recycled externally in furnaces that remove zinc.