Tata Steel informed employees at its South Wales-based Strip Products business about cost reduction and high-value production concentrate on production of hot rolled coil at its Port Talbot facility empowered with quality and capacity upgrades and using recovered energy sources from the steelworks. Some coil processing facilities including the facility at Llanwern, Newport, will be retained for future projects. The Llanwern mill was ramped up and down on two occasions since 2009.
Tata Steel employees at the Llanwern mill will be redeployed within the business and the company will discuss possible impacts with contractual service providers.
Stuart Wilkie, director of Strip Products UK, said: “Tata Steel has invested upwards of £350 million to improve the steel industry in Wales in the past five years. In the teeth of a recession we rebuilt a blast furnace, improved the Port Talbot hot strip mill and upgraded the capabilities of our world-class galvanising line at Llanwern. We also built new steel processing technology at Llanwern – a site which will continue to specialise in finishing and distributing our steel products.
“We need to concentrate more on sales of differentiated products to key sectors including automotive, engineering, construction, packaging and consumer goods.”
