Redcar Steel plant

[hidetheelephants]

s2art said:

Is a modern steelworks particularly polluting? The TV coverage of Port Talbot didnt show any evidence of dirt or black buildings.

Steelworks are filthy workplaces, everything is coated in a layer of black stoor. Emissions have dropped over the years though, particularly the collection and recycling of flue gases for heat and power.

[Digga]

hidetheelephants said:

s2art said:

Is a modern steelworks particularly polluting? The TV coverage of Port Talbot didnt show any evidence of dirt or black buildings.

Steelworks are filthy workplaces, everything is coated in a layer of black stoor. Emissions have dropped over the years though, particularly the collection and recycling of flue gases for heat and power.

You can shift steel about without iron oxide dust. Fact. You can coat/paint the finished steel product to minimise this, but that passes on other problems to fabricators (we have to shot blast plate because grinding around welds makes other sorts of dust that aren't too healthy). And it's neither clean nor particularly healthy, but as these things go, the plant is no doubt relatively clean.

I should add that people discussing the relative cleanliness from the (luxury?) of a nice, clean tidy desk should be grateful that there are people willing and able to get up and bash metal every morning on their behalf. the whole world still actually relies on it, even if it is "Victorian" to some, like litter picking, I don't see the need to deride it.

[JagLover]

johnxjsc1985 said:

The cost coming off the production line is the problem regardless of how its arrived at and we all demand cheap goods.As I say we are all to blame.

Well of course we all demand cheap goods. My point was if TVs were made in the west you wouldn't see a doubling in price.

In fact I think many rich far eastern countries, like Taiwan, still produce a large number of flat panel displays. So it is possible in a country with high labour costs.

[Welshbeef]

So this pension hole help suggested by the govt - ALL PARTIES - what does it mean to me as a tax payer?

[herewego]

Perhaps Liberty house is correct and there's no point in making fresh steel from raw materials especially as we are currently exporting scrap steel. I expect we can make enough steel from our own scrap materials using arc furnaces a lot more efficiently than making it from scratch. Most of the raw materials for steel making are imported anyway even assuming we use locally sourced limestone. Port Talbot makes about 4 MTonne a year and there's easily that much scrap produced in the UK each year.

[Digga]

herewego said:

Perhaps Liberty house is correct and there's no point in making fresh steel from raw materials especially as we are currently exporting scrap steel. I expect we can make enough steel from our own scrap materials using arc furnaces a lot more efficiently than making it from scratch.

Very difficult to make some of the highest grade (clever, specialist and most profitable) steels without extremely high-grade ores.

[herewego]

Digga said:

herewego said:

Perhaps Liberty house is correct and there's no point in making fresh steel from raw materials especially as we are currently exporting scrap steel. I expect we can make enough steel from our own scrap materials using arc furnaces a lot more efficiently than making it from scratch.

Very difficult to make some of the highest grade (clever, specialist and most profitable) steels without extremely high-grade ores.

Port Talbot only seem to make basic steels at the moment though. Would the plant be capable of making specialist steels? Could this be a significant part of their output given that there are mills in France in Germany already well known for making high grade steels?

[Police State]

Jimboka said:

Do we really want such polluting, Victorian industries here. Isn't it better to get shot ?

NO.

Name the country ????

Steel is the backbone of the ???? economy

As a basic industry, the steel sector is particularly important for the value-creation chains in ????. The numerous innovations implemented by this industry and its close interrelations with other industrial sectors contributes towards the success of, for example, the car industry or machine construction. The steel sector supplies about one-fifth of the input purchases for machine construction and 12 per cent of those for the automotive industry. Other important customer sectors include electrical engineering, the building sector as well as steel and metal processing. With about 3.5 million employees, the steel-intensive sectors account for two out of every three jobs in the processing industry.

The steel industry is also an important customer for numerous supplier sectors. This is due to its high input intensities: the steel industry is responsible for an annual transport volume of about 145 m. tonnes. Then there are the long production chains and the comprehensive range in production, as well as the associated services involved – from pig iron production to the rolled steel product. Studies on economic significance show that every euro of additional value creation in the steel industry in ???? generates a further 1.7 euros of value creation in upstream sectors. It has also been empirically proved that each job in the steel industry is connected with five to six further jobs in the supplier industries.

[Digga]

herewego said:

Port Talbot only seem to make basic steels at the moment though. Would the plant be capable of making specialist steels?

Dunno, but others claim there is significant need for investment and change at the plant in any case.

herewego said:

Could this be a significant part of their output given that there are mills in France in Germany already well known for making high grade steels?

There is still significant domestic demand for high-grade engineering steels; automotive, air etc. so it may well be worth pursuing.

[maffski]

Digga said:

herewego said:

Could this be a significant part of their output given that there are mills in France in Germany already well known for making high grade steels?

There is still significant domestic demand for high-grade engineering steels; automotive, air etc. so it may well be worth pursuing.

My understanding is that much of the automotive sector is transitioning to arc furnace/recycled steel, the blast furnaces were only maintained for this as we already had them and the licence costs for the patents required for automotive quality steel from EAF. Those patents have expired now so the EAF steel is good enough, and cheaper.

I suspect when TATA purchased the plants it was always with the expectation of running them until they were obsolete, rather than investment to extend their life.

[FiF]

herewego said:

Digga said:

herewego said:

Perhaps Liberty house is correct and there's no point in making fresh steel from raw materials especially as we are currently exporting scrap steel. I expect we can make enough steel from our own scrap materials using arc furnaces a lot more efficiently than making it from scratch.

Very difficult to make some of the highest grade (clever, specialist and most profitable) steels without extremely high-grade ores.

Port Talbot only seem to make basic steels at the moment though. Would the plant be capable of making specialist steels? Could this be a significant part of their output given that there are mills in France in Germany already well known for making high grade steels?

Listening to the Liberty CEO this morning he seems to place great significance on electric arc furnaces, rather than the Port Talbot method of blast furnace reduction of iron ore to iron, and then subsequent refining to steel in BOS furnaces and onto continuous casting. Advantage of electric arc is that it's a batch process, rather than continuous one, so with suitable alloy additions it's possible to switch from one grade to another, within limits. Downside is that it's never going to have the lower conversion cost per tonne of the existing route, but that one requires large demand for one grade.

It's a swings and roundabouts scenario, clearly Liberty think the cold rolling end has possibilities, but the hot end is more difficult. But to my mind going for electric arc, and what that will entail, possibly impacts on other steel producers, eg Rotherham, Stocksbridge, or maybe they are too specialised to be impacted, perhaps Shorpe more so? Thing is that it isn't just a case of steel is steel, it's more the downstream product sector in alloy composition and shape / size of products which determines what equipment is needed. Seems that Port Talbot / Llanwern are pretty much totally dedicated to flat products, both hot and cold rolled, and in relatively low alloys. Massive task to turn round imo.

[scunnylad]

Just a couple of points,electric arc furnaces are used to feed continuous casting plants not just batch make

Port Talbot is set up mill wise to make flat coil/strip.The BOS plant is capable of making many grades of
specialist alloy steels but if your product is flat strip not sure there is a demand for high grades,exotic
alloy steel in volume in the strip market.
At a push the casters could be converted to make heavy plate but considering TATA mothballed the plate mill
at Shorpe recently that doesn't seem viable.
Most of the high value steels are cast thru the "section" casters at Shorpe
Port Talbot has none of these casters.

High value steels which are required in volume include tyre cord wire,railway steels,heavy plate which
is welded to make large beams for bridges etc,steel used for construction of heavy plant vehicles

[RottenIcons]

Off the line of the discussion but the swear filter here hates Shorpe! Come on that has to be some shade of xenophobia!

[FiF]

scunnylad said:

Just a couple of points,electric arc furnaces are used to feed continuous casting plants not just batch make

Port Talbot is set up mill wise to make flat coil/strip.The BOS plant is capable of making many grades of
specialist alloy steels but if your product is flat strip not sure there is a demand for high grades,exotic
alloy steel in volume in the strip market.
At a push the casters could be converted to make heavy plate but considering TATA mothballed the plate mill
at Shorpe recently that doesn't seem viable.
Most of the high value steels are cast thru the "section" casters at Shorpe
Port Talbot has none of these casters.

High value steels which are required in volume include tyre cord wire,railway steels,heavy plate which
is welded to make large beams for bridges etc,steel used for construction of heavy plant vehicles

Point is that, yes technically, it's only the blast furnaces that are continuous processes per se, everything else is batch or can be operated that way. Port Talbot is designed to produce products which are required in large tonnages, very large tonnages, and that defines the specifics behind all the other plant, not just the liquid metal processes, but all the hot end, casting, heating furnaces, cooling pits and so on. Even the caster withdrawal mechanism will be different in some ways.

Of course it depends what is meant by high value steels, to me even the 300 series austenitic grades can be decidedly low rent.

[scunnylad]

Can't argue with what you are saying.

My only point really was that it would be very difficult for Port Talbot to diversify into products
apart from strip.Any conversion to plant would be very costly and involve a large timescale.
Obviously on top of the cost of the arc furnaces.

However i sincerely hope that someone does take the site on and invest

[cardigankid]

V8 Fettler said:

The cash flow crisis in 2008 could have resulted in empty cash machines = food riots in four days or so.

What a load of scaremongering fairy stories.

Take the Banks into receivership, print more money, fill the machines - just don't pay out the con men - yet that is exactly what they did.

There was no justification whatsoever for the massive bailouts that took place.

Kindly don't insult us with any more food riot talk.

[Bodo]

Oakey said:

erm, according to the media recently Uber has supposedly bought, or is in the process of buying, 100,000 Mercs

Wait until Uber and its competitors run a fleet of millions of self-driving taxis. The loss of jobs for cab drivers worldwide (starting in the high-wage countries) will make this loss of steel industry jobs look like a minor glitch.

This will start in five years, expand to low-wage countries in ten, and will be finished in 25 years. By 2025, using the services of a human driven cab in London will be three times the price of a self-driving cab.

[anonymous-user]

cardigankid said:

What a load of scaremongering fairy stories.

Take the Banks into receivership, print more money, fill the machines - just don't pay out the con men - yet that is exactly what they did.

There was no justification whatsoever for the massive bailouts that took place.

Kindly don't insult us with any more food riot talk.

Wow. You really have no clue!

[Axionknight]

fblm said:

cardigankid said:

What a load of scaremongering fairy stories.

Take the Banks into receivership, print more money, fill the machines - just don't pay out the con men - yet that is exactly what they did.

There was no justification whatsoever for the massive bailouts that took place.

Kindly don't insult us with any more food riot talk.

Wow. You really have no clue!

It's really that easy, honest, the memes being circulated on Facebook say so!

[gazza285]

[quote=scunnylad]

My only point really was that it would be very difficult for Port Talbot to diversify into products
apart from strip. [quote]

There's a large demand for strip though, especially coated strip, so hopefully Port Talbot and Shotton should survive in one form or another, but with slab, bloom and billet now available for much less than any British plant can produce it for I can see why the blast furnaces are not wanted. It would lessen the environmental pollution massively as well, not much upstream of the casters can be classed as clean.