Several years ago I visited Joy Mining in Worcester with the IET local group.
The company was originally Dowry Meco and steel was delivered by train from South Wales, at the time of our visit steel made in South Wales was being shipped to the former shipbuilding yards in Poland for fabrication then transported back to Worcester for assembly before the finished mining products were shipped worldwide. The factory had now been bought by Komatsu and I presume Welsh steel is still being fabricated in Poland and brought back to the UK for assembly.
A comment made during the IET visit was that transport is cheap making the transportation of huge pieces steel around Europe economically viable when it would actually make far more sense to still put the steel on a train to move it directly from South Wales to Worcester.
Steel is moved around in huge quantities at a relatively low cost, transport costs are not a major concern unlike actual cost and quality of the steel.
If the UK does not use a significant amount of the steel produced in the UK within the UK and the UK crashes out of of the EU on WTO terms is there any point in saving British Steel?
America with Donald Trump as president is not going to readily accept imports of British Steel with tariffs already in place and will EU manufacturers be prepared to pay the tariffs that will come if we trade on WTO terms?
The government needs to step in and help save British Steel to demonstrate that they believe that UK industry has a future post Brexit, unless it is competitively priced high quality steel that can supply a healthy domestic market and be exported tariff free is there any point?
Several years ago I visited Joy Mining in Worcester with the IET local group.
The company was originally Dowry Meco and steel was delivered by train from South Wales, at the time of our visit steel made in South Wales was being shipped to the former shipbuilding yards in Poland for fabrication then transported back to Worcester for assembly before the finished mining products were shipped worldwide. The factory had now been bought by Komatsu and I presume Welsh steel is still being fabricated in Poland and brought back to the UK for assembly.
A comment made during the IET visit was that transport is cheap making the transportation of huge pieces steel around Europe economically viable when it would actually make far more sense to still put the steel on a train to move it directly from South Wales to Worcester.
Steel is moved around in huge quantities at a relatively low cost, transport costs are not a major concern unlike actual cost and quality of the steel.
If the UK does not use a significant amount of the steel produced in the UK within the UK and the UK crashes out of of the EU on WTO terms is there any point in saving British Steel?
America with Donald Trump as president is not going to readily accept imports of British Steel with tariffs already in place and will EU manufacturers be prepared to pay the tariffs that will come if we trade on WTO terms?
The government needs to step in and help save British Steel to demonstrate that they believe that UK industry has a future post Brexit, unless it is competitively priced high quality steel that can supply a healthy domestic market and be exported tariff free is there any point?
