Redcar Steel plant
Discussion
Otispunkmeyer said:
Not sure if already known, but I think today/yesterday they have decided thats it. The ovens are going off, some parts of the plant have already been taken for scrap. The guys left are of the opinion that once the ovens have gone cold, thats it. game over.
Sad for all involved. Sad for my Home (Middlesbrough). Even if your dad didn't work at the steel works you didn't have to go through many friends to find someones dad who did. My Dad started out there but got into Oil, he said it was a great place to work back in the day.
My Mother still works at what was only very recently the RD&T center for the steel works. TATA actually wanted rid and the management performed a by-out to have it run off its own back providing RD&T skills to the steel works and other industry. I haven't been told anything bad by my mum so I am assuming they are fine for now! I believe they are called MPI now.
Sad day here on Teesside for sure. And a pretty shocking performance from the government... And a no show from James Wharton the 'Northern Powerhouse Minister' Sad for all involved. Sad for my Home (Middlesbrough). Even if your dad didn't work at the steel works you didn't have to go through many friends to find someones dad who did. My Dad started out there but got into Oil, he said it was a great place to work back in the day.
My Mother still works at what was only very recently the RD&T center for the steel works. TATA actually wanted rid and the management performed a by-out to have it run off its own back providing RD&T skills to the steel works and other industry. I haven't been told anything bad by my mum so I am assuming they are fine for now! I believe they are called MPI now.
It's going to cost more to demolish the site that it would to have kept it running.
FiF said:
Started to formulate a post around the idea that there are certain products, skills, industries that are strategically important to a nation, that sensibly should not be allowed to close and be lost, the sort of things that are vital to the running of the nation, and even more so if we were on a war footing, when even foreign ownership might not be too helpful.
So began a list of things that no sensible place would outsource to foreign supply or ownership.
Military defence obviously.
Energy, err oops.
Water supply, err oops.
Transport, err bugger.
Steel, aluminium and other special metal products, oh oops again.
Construction, that's a bit better due to smaller sized companies in this sector.
Aerospace, not totally gone but foreign takeovers of concern as identified by Civitas.
Then someone offered me a bit of Cadbury's Dairy Milk that the Yanks have managed to screw up and so I gave up trying to make any sense of it.
Britain's takeover regulations are too lax.
Interesting. So began a list of things that no sensible place would outsource to foreign supply or ownership.
Military defence obviously.
Energy, err oops.
Water supply, err oops.
Transport, err bugger.
Steel, aluminium and other special metal products, oh oops again.
Construction, that's a bit better due to smaller sized companies in this sector.
Aerospace, not totally gone but foreign takeovers of concern as identified by Civitas.
Then someone offered me a bit of Cadbury's Dairy Milk that the Yanks have managed to screw up and so I gave up trying to make any sense of it.
Britain's takeover regulations are too lax.
I'll add Book printing. You know, William Caxton and all that.
'If tis wrong I do, then tis a fine and noble wrong.'
Caxton was criticised for printing books - it might lead to the education of the poor!
Well in Caxton's land today, there's absolutely bugger all left which isn't foreign-owned.
As for the best quality/price book printing today? China. By a mile.
Nobody gives a f.
Scuffers said:
Even more stupid when you can say that they want to build HS2 and where do you think the steel rails going to come from?
s
horpeinteresting point regarding demolition and making good. i think they'll be able to worm out of a lot of the environmental considerations mind you.
shirt said:
lackenby strip mill closed, as did workington. maybe 10yrs ago now?
tata's redcar mill is heavy section, beams upto 1.0m. this may part of the old lackenby works, not sure on the history of that site tbh.
scunny has primary steelmaking, a bloom/billet mill [feedstock], section mill [smaller stuff and rail], plate mill and a wire & rod mill.
rotherham has a section mill. corby does tube. port talbot both have primary steel making [and ijmuiden in NL] and roll strip. north wales [shotton] has a secondary manufacturing plant - galvanising/coating strip.
i think thats it for manufacturing, loads of other bits to it though. looks like the rail consulting division is doing good business by the amount of jobs they have advertised.
didn't know llanwern had closed. when was that?
Bloom/billet mill closed at Scunny a few years ago following the building of two newtata's redcar mill is heavy section, beams upto 1.0m. this may part of the old lackenby works, not sure on the history of that site tbh.
scunny has primary steelmaking, a bloom/billet mill [feedstock], section mill [smaller stuff and rail], plate mill and a wire & rod mill.
rotherham has a section mill. corby does tube. port talbot both have primary steel making [and ijmuiden in NL] and roll strip. north wales [shotton] has a secondary manufacturing plant - galvanising/coating strip.
i think thats it for manufacturing, loads of other bits to it though. looks like the rail consulting division is doing good business by the amount of jobs they have advertised.
didn't know llanwern had closed. when was that?
casters producing smaller sections.
Section/rail mill and rod mill fed direct from the casters.
Scunny plate mill supplies plate for the beam mill at Redcar
dandarez said:
Nobody gives a f.
My information is that the owners had *never* made a profitin the five years they had owned it.
AFAIK, world price for the kind of steel produced by Redcar is about
£160 - £180 per tonne.
Redcar produced it at never less than £400 a tonne.
Welcome to the harsh cold world of economic reality.
Maybe Redcar should have gone into special high value steel
and not tried to compete with the Far East on plain
ordinary commodity steel ?
Loved going in the beam mill. Really interesting to follow a slab from oven, through roughing/cogging, cut to length, cooling and roller straightening.
The plate mill at Shorpe was also fun. Remember working on the SMS demag cold plate leveller.
They did have as well something o think called the TAB leveller? Tank Armour or something. Now that was a machine, the cast frame must have been the most sturdy thing I've ever seen. If you nuked that site, that thing would be the only thing left and it would probably still work!
The plate mill at S
horpe was also fun. Remember working on the SMS demag cold plate leveller.They did have as well something o think called the TAB leveller? Tank Armour or something. Now that was a machine, the cast frame must have been the most sturdy thing I've ever seen. If you nuked that site, that thing would be the only thing left and it would probably still work!
dcb said:
My information is that the owners had *never* made a profit
in the five years they had owned it.
AFAIK, world price for the kind of steel produced by Redcar is about
£160 - £180 per tonne.
Redcar produced it at never less than £400 a tonne.
Welcome to the harsh cold world of economic reality.
Maybe Redcar should have gone into special high value steel
and not tried to compete with the Far East on plain
ordinary commodity steel ?
As has already been demonstrated, a large part of the price issue is the ridiculous price of energy in the UK as a result of insane climate change politics.in the five years they had owned it.
AFAIK, world price for the kind of steel produced by Redcar is about
£160 - £180 per tonne.
Redcar produced it at never less than £400 a tonne.
Welcome to the harsh cold world of economic reality.
Maybe Redcar should have gone into special high value steel
and not tried to compete with the Far East on plain
ordinary commodity steel ?
What is even more stupid is that as a result, we are shifting production to China etc., where they generate 3 or 4 times as much CO2 per ton of steel.
So not only do we destroy out vestigial proper industry, but we make the (non-existent) problem the sacrifice is made for, significantly worse.
Next time someone tells you the green energy industry (windmills, PV, electric cars etc. ) creates jobs, remember this. The jobs are fake, not economically viable, paid through extortionate subsidies from tax/costs passed on to energy bill payers, and many more times as many jobs are destroyed.
[quote=dcb]
My information is that the owners had *never* made a profit
in the five years they had owned it.
AFAIK, world price for the kind of steel produced by Redcar is about
£160 - £180 per tonne.
Redcar produced it at never less than £400 a tonne.
Welcome to the harsh cold world of economic reality.
Maybe Redcar should have gone into special high value steel
and not tried to compete with the Far East on plain
ordinary commodity steel ?
SSI uk spent tens of millions bringing the plant back on line after it was previously mothballed so
I would imagine some sort of feasibility study was carried out
Virtually all of the plain commodity steel plate as you call it was sent directly to Thailand
to feed the strip mills owned by the parent company SSI Thailand which iirc is a far eastern country.
I wouldn't pretend to know why they thought they could make this work but people with a great deal
more knowledge of the world steel industry than us obviously thought it was viable
My information is that the owners had *never* made a profit
in the five years they had owned it.
AFAIK, world price for the kind of steel produced by Redcar is about
£160 - £180 per tonne.
Redcar produced it at never less than £400 a tonne.
Welcome to the harsh cold world of economic reality.
Maybe Redcar should have gone into special high value steel
and not tried to compete with the Far East on plain
ordinary commodity steel ?
SSI uk spent tens of millions bringing the plant back on line after it was previously mothballed so
I would imagine some sort of feasibility study was carried out
Virtually all of the plain commodity steel plate as you call it was sent directly to Thailand
to feed the strip mills owned by the parent company SSI Thailand which iirc is a far eastern country.
I wouldn't pretend to know why they thought they could make this work but people with a great deal
more knowledge of the world steel industry than us obviously thought it was viable
Edited by scunnylad on Monday 12th October 22:39
fblm said:
"Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said ..."Energy costs in Britain are on average 80% higher than those in the rest of Europe""
Is that right? WTF! If it is can I assume its all tax?
Keep up at the back.Is that right? WTF! If it is can I assume its all tax?
Mr GrimNasty said:
The 'locked in' green costs are expected to raise UK price a further 47% by 2020 for large users.
Mr GrimNasty said:
Keep up at the back.
Its a fair cop guv. I appreciated they were probably high on a global basis but why the fvck are they higher than the rest of Europe? Your politicians are fvcking retarded. So let me get this straight; in order to reduce carbon emissions, instead of making steel you're going to have someone else make it, probably less efficiently and ship it half way around the planet? Wow. You couldn't make it up.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff