In 2009, Indian-owned Tata Steel was forced to make around 1,500 workers redundant when the company was hit by falling demand.
The company has managed to restructure its operations, however, and is now making a profit once again. As a result, it will now be investing a total of 4.5 million in energy efficiency and reliability improvements across four separate projects at its sites in Rotherham and Stocksbridge. The energy saved as a result of these measures will be equivalent to that needed to power 4,000 homes, whilst CO2 emissions will also be reduced and productivity will get a boost.
Having already invested more than 20 million in the region, the company will now be spending a further 2m on fume extraction systems, 1m on surface inspection equipment, 1m on furnaces and 500,000 on moulding equipment.
Despite the persistence of woeful reports on the economy in the UK and Europe, there is a healthy demand for steel at present, fuelled by high-tech industries such as aerospace and energy.
Indeed, British-made steel very often finds its way into high-end manufacturing and construction applications. It is chosen for such safety-critical uses because the steel itself is produced in a way that lends itself to technologically demanding situations.
Thanks to a strong and competitive supply chain, steel produced in Britain is exported all over the world, and this is generating a healthy return. The South Yorkshire operations have also been given a lift thanks to the city of Sheffield putting speciality metal production at the centre of its industrial strategy. Steel has been produced in Sheffield for more than 300 years.
In Europe, some steel plants have been mothballed as the economic slowdown has hit a number of producers hard. Tata’s UK operations have escaped such a fate, however. Indeed, things are looking very encouraging for them at present. Since the mass redundancies in 2009, Tata has brought 450 new people on board, with a 2,000-strong workforce in South Yorkshire overall.
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