British Steel on verge

[old'un]

Will they fall?...Should the government bail them out? On this one I feel they should as there’s potentially more than 25,000 jobs at risk…https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48347371

[mick miller]

It's not a bank or investment firm, so, nah.

[oldypigeonpopper]

hello, cannot see that happening old un, another nail in the coffin for British Industry, i dont think the OWNERS will worry may be a tax loss, what with the 4,000 at Swindon car plant, is this a new recession  or will they blame it on BREXIT?

Edited May 21, 2019 by oldypigeonpopper

[sam triple]

amazing to think this will fail what with Chinese cheap metal flooding in ,as soon as they have the majority of the market their prices will rocket and well be back to square one ,I work in aerospace industry and we are struggling to get materials in on time this wont help us one bit ,yes the government should help them out the knock on effect could be horrendous

[NoBodyImportant]

Trump tariffed Chinese steel.  We are seeing our industry grow like crazy. 

[old'un]

2 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Trump tariffed Chinese steel.  We are seeing our industry grow like crazy. 

Apart from the potential loss of 25.000+ jobs, would the UK still be classed as a super power if we rely solely on imported steel for our manufacturing industries?

With the elections this week will the possible loss of British Steel have any influence on the outcome?

I can hear the remainers now saying this is the start of the effects of Brexit.

[243ack]

I thought British Steel was now owned by Indians?

[grrclark]

It would be interesting to get more of the detail behind this.

One of the reasons Tata backed away originally, Greybull Capital stepped in to buy and renamed back to BS, was because of the onerous pension liabilities that carried forward from the original British Steel.

The business was fundamentally profitable, but the pension liability was massive.

As an aside and for discussion, as part of our environmental consciousness amid talks of climate emergencies, this sort of dirty industry is not what we want.  If we wish to be carbon neutral then not having highly polluting, high carbon energy consuming steel mills is a bonus.

The creative industries in the UK are now bigger than heavy, dirty industry ever was as a contributor to the economy, so should we save the steel mill or is this just another step in our transition to cleaner, better paid and safer core employment in the UK?

[old'un]

34 minutes ago, grrclark said:

It would be interesting to get more of the detail behind this.

One of the reasons Tata backed away originally, Greybull Capital stepped in to buy and renamed back to BS, was because of the onerous pension liabilities that carried forward from the original British Steel.

The business was fundamentally profitable, but the pension liability was massive.

As an aside and for discussion, as part of our environmental consciousness amid talks of climate emergencies, this sort of dirty industry is not what we want.  If we wish to be carbon neutral then not having highly polluting, high carbon energy consuming steel mills is a bonus.

The creative industries in the UK are now bigger than heavy, dirty industry ever was as a contributor to the economy, so should we save the steel mill or is this just another step in our transition to cleaner, better paid and safer core employment in the UK?

I would like to know which creative industries will fill the place of potentially 25,000 jobs? After all they also need steel to grow, look around you and see how much steel is part of life.

Ok we can import steel but at what cost, it still as to-be manufactured somewhere and then transported, still producing carbon, I don’t think the loss of steel making in the UK will have much effect on the worlds carbon output.

[ditchman]

if we get out of the eu then we will be able to stabilise the steel price thro sensible control.........so if we suspect that we will grow after the eu...then we should keep it alive at the small cost already mooted.......

[grrclark]

Just for the sake of discussion, i’m not taking a position on this one way or the other.

The creative industries currently employ more than 2m people in the uk, 1 in every 11 jobs.  They employ about 700,000 more people than the financial services industry and generate about 5.5% of GDP.

In the last 8 years the industry has grown by about 30%.

The point being that we sometimes get caught up in the notion that the UK doesn’t make stuff because we typically think about big stuff like steel, ships and trains.

The UK is a brilliant country and whilst of course any impact to 25,000 jobs would be a dreadful blow to all involved, at a macro scale it isn’t as impactful as we might fear.

I actually do believe we should retain a core of heavy industrial capability, but it is not the essential behemoth it once was.

[ph5172]

I don’t really know a lot about it but I recall the Chinese steel is so massively subsidised by the government it is cheaper than the cost to produce. 

You don’t do that for nothing - a long term plan to dominate and control the market seems likely to me. 

In todays world we need to retain the ability to be self sufficient for a period of time in all major industries, be that heavy industry, power and food production. 

I’m not saying completely self sufficient but enough to ride out any limited termoil  

[Rewulf]

1 minute ago, ph5172 said:

In todays world we need to retain the ability to be self sufficient for a period of time in all major industries, be that heavy industry, power and food production. 

I’m not saying completely self sufficient but enough to ride out any limited termoil  

+1

[NoBodyImportant]

The main reason behind trump’stariffs is not to protect jobs as much as it is to keep steel production in the USA.  You don’t won’t to have to buy you weapon materials from your potential enemy.  

[grrclark]

China are/were also consuming steel and concrete at an almighty rate through their domestic building campaign, but they have at least 7 completely empty cities so their domestic demand has peaked.

That internal demand afforded them huge economy of scale and the excess production was punted overseas at low cost, it is not a sustainable position.

[old'un]

21 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

The main reason behind trump’stariffs is not to protect jobs as much as it is to keep steel production in the USA.  You don’t won’t to have to buy you weapon materials from your potential enemy.  

One of British steels customers is British Rail, it supplies around 200,000 tonnes of Steel to British Rail, the contract is worth around £200m, this steel must be hard wearing and resistant to cracking, can you imagine the **** from china, as you say once we loose the ability to produce our own steel where does that leave us.  

[old'un]

1 hour ago, ditchman said:

if we get out of the eu then we will be able to stabilise the steel price thro sensible control.........so if we suspect that we will grow after the eu...then we should keep it alive at the small cost already mooted.......

There’s a thought, will you be able to make any decent knifes from Chinese steel?

[grrclark]

12 minutes ago, old'un said:

One of British steels customers is British Rail, it supplies around 200,000 tonnes of Steel to British Rail, the contract is worth around £200m, this steel must be hard wearing and resistant to cracking, can you imagine the **** from china, as you say once we loose the ability to produce our own steel where does that leave us.  

That is the craziness if it all, the Tata long products division that since became British Steel was a sound business, however there was 1bn of pension liability from the old nationalised British steel days that the Tata group didn’t fancy having on the balance sheet.

It’s not just about operational or market performance of today, it is the effects of low productivity and inefficiency from 25 years ago still causing hurt.  Tragic really.

 

[henry d]

2 hours ago, old'un said:

I would like to know which creative industries will fill the place of potentially 25,000 jobs? After all they also need steel to grow, look around you and see how much steel is part of life.

Dundee`s tech/gaming industry is blooming, not so much filling the place as such, but getting bigger as time has gone on so it has been sneaking through in the backgound, its had an enormous effect on Dundee as a city and the Uni etc

[panoma1]

Is this not solely the fault of Westminster? BS have had a massive bill from the EU, which they cannot pay! A bill they would not have had if the UK had left the EU when it should have, the fact that MP's have frustrated the democratic will of the people and prevented the UK leaving the EU.....has put BS in this position.........without a massive public financial bailout.......effectively bankrupt!

[ditchman]

1 hour ago, henry d said:

Dundee`s tech/gaming industry is blooming, not so much filling the place as such, but getting bigger as time has gone on so it has been sneaking through in the backgound, its had an enormous effect on Dundee as a city and the Uni etc

thigs do change ...Dundee was the jute capitol of the world.....they used to call it "jute city".........and time moves on......

[oldypigeonpopper]

hello, seems another of our Restaurant chains in trouble, who is going to bail our Jamie Oliver out, any takers???

[henry d]

18 minutes ago, ditchman said:

thigs do change ...Dundee was the jute capitol of the world.....they used to call it "jute city".........and time moves on......

Jute, jeelie (jam) and journalism.

Well the journalism is mainly, "oor Wullie" and the Courier/Tully. Here`s one of the Tully`s latest and greatest headlines... "Terror as blood soaked axe-weilding naked man wrestled to ground on Dundee street" Local woman said she "saw naked guy covered in blood waving weapon. It looked like an axe". In Dundonian it would have been a bit different

[grrclark]

1 hour ago, henry d said:

Jute, jeelie (jam) and journalism.

Well the journalism is mainly, "oor Wullie" and the Courier/Tully. Here`s one of the Tully`s latest and greatest headlines... "Terror as blood soaked axe-weilding naked man wrestled to ground on Dundee street" Local woman said she "saw naked guy covered in blood waving weapon. It looked like an axe". In Dundonian it would have been a bit different

That does a bit of an injustice to DC Thomson.  The Courier is Scotland’s largest independent newspaper and The Sunday Post is massive in UK national sales.

Sadly the jute industry is but a memory and Jam is more appropriate to Arbroath now.

2 hours ago, panoma1 said:

Is this not solely the fault of Westminster? BS have had a massive bill from the EU, which they cannot pay! A bill they would not have had if the UK had left the EU when it should have, the fact that MP's have frustrated the democratic will of the people and prevented the UK leaving the EU.....has put BS in this position.........without a massive public financial bailout.......effectively bankrupt!

I don’t believe that is accurate or fair. Sure there was a £100m EU penalty for emissions, but even had we left it would still have had to be paid through the transition phase.

[Jega]

Living in S****horpe as i do is no bed of roses at the moment,although i don't work on the steel works many many of  my friends do and as you can well imagine they are very worried.

As for the idea of "new creative " companies and embryo business units we already are at saturation point with these in the town following the previous steel work closures in the 1980's, it's worth mentioning that most if not all of these small firms are dependent in some way or another on the steel works by either providing goods or services .

Now i'm no political animal but its ironic that the crossrail project in London can go 12 months overdue and about £3 billion over budget and not a word is said about it yet British steel need £ 30 million and all sorts of calamities ensue.